


Journey of a Lifetime

by Heather_Relly



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Biotic Shepard, Earthborn Shepard, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, KIND of canon, Kind of AU, M/M, Origin Story, Retelling, Slow Burn, Soldier shepard, Two Shepards, my own take on everything, shameless self insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 41,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23934574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather_Relly/pseuds/Heather_Relly
Summary: Justin and Heather Shepard were born on Earth, tragedy forcing them into the arms of the Reds.What happens when Justin joins the Alliance and leaves Heather behind? How do their path's cross again?How does the universe handle two Shepards?Story updated with new titleAll characters and main story line belong to Bioware
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into Mass Effect fanfic. Its been in my head for a while, now just getting it out on paper!

Justin Shepard was 10 years old when his parents died and his sister was injured severely in a car crash. He had complained about going with them to pick up the ice cream for their celebration, and demanded to stay home alone since he was 10 years old. Little did he know, that was the last time he would see his parents alive when a drunk driver crossed the center line, smashing directly into the small skycar that his family owned.

The police officer pulled him through the hospital to go see his sister, Heather. He was resentful. Why did she have to be the one to live and their parents to die? She was just his pesky little sister, 2 years younger than him, and capable of annoying him constantly. He wanted his mom, his dad. Not her. 

“Justin, you need to stop it,” the police officer told him. “Heather lost her parents too, you need to be there for each other.”

Justin stopped in his tracks when he saw Heather laying in the hospital bed. Being in the back seat, Heather was able to escape with minimal injuries, but Justin immediately noticed the large bandage wrapped around her neck. He turned to the police officer, tears building in his eyes. “What happened to her neck?”

The police officer squatted down, looking Justin in the eye. “The crash was a really bad one. When the other car hit your family, it crumpled up in. A piece of metal came back and cut Heather’s neck. Thankfully, it missed all the arteries but she will have a rather large scar on her neck now. Thankfully, that was the worst that she experienced there.”

Tears were pouring down Justin’s face. The realization hit that Heather was all that he had left. 

The cop looked to Justin and asked him, “Do you guys have any family here? Any grandparents, aunts, uncles?”

Justin shook his head. “No, we don’t. We called Mom’s friend Auntie, but other than that, no there isn’t anyone.”

The police officer sat and talked with Justin to see what information he could get about their mother’s friend. He took the information and got in touch with the dispatch center to see what they could figure out.

The police officer left the room to work on this, leaving Justin alone with his sister. He took the chair and pulled it up next to the bed. It was a lot taller than he expected, which resulted in him crawling into the chair. He looked at his sister, some blood still matting her blonde hair near the bandage on the right side of her neck. She looked tiny in the bed, just showing how small she was at 8 years old. Her eyes were closed, but the machines beeping told him she was just sleeping. He started to cry again, realizing just how close he came to losing her too.

“I’m sorry,” Justin choked, “I’m sorry I was mean to you. You were my pesky sister. I wanted you to leave me alone. I don’t want you to leave me alone now” His head fell to his chest as he continued to sob.

The police officer walked back in the room; this time accompanied by a lady dressed in a brown suit. “Justin, this is Angie. She works with social services.” The lady smiled warmly at him, trying to make him feel comfortable. The police officer sighed as he pulled a chair up next to Justin. “I have some bad news. We found your Auntie. She can’t take you and Heather in, because she doesn’t have enough room for you guys. Angie is going to take you to a nice couple here in the city that you will stay with until we can find a permanent home for you.”

Justin looked at the officer with glassy eyes. “What about Heather? When is she going to come home with me?”

The officer looked to the social worker. She nodded and came closer to Justin. “She isn’t going to come with you. Your Auntie can’t take you both, but she can take Heather, so Heather is going to go live with her.”

“No!” Justin screamed, jumping to his feet. “You can’t take my sister away from me! You can’t take her away…” his voice trailed off as he broke into tears. 

Angie wrapped her arms around Justin and pulled him away from Heather’s bed. “Your Auntie has agreed that you and Heather will still get to see each other, so she isn’t going away forever. We will make sure of that.”

Justin’s tears stopped as he pushed away from the social worker, crossing his arms and stamping one foot on the ground. The police officer stepped up towards him. “Justin, unfortunately you don’t have a choice. You are going to come with us to go meet your new foster family tonight.” Justin wouldn’t turn back towards the officer. The social worker and officer looked to each other, the social worker nodding. The officer reached down and picked Justin, carrying him out of the room while he screamed for his sister.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Justin sat anxiously as he waited for his “aunt” to bring Heather for their visit. It had been about 6 months since their parents had died and the visits with his sister were becoming fewer and farther apart. He mumbled under his breath as their meeting time grew closer. He always begged his foster parents to get him there early, to ensure that he wouldn’t miss a minute of their visit.

His “aunt” didn’t abide by punctuality much. They were continually late, and on more than one occasion they never showed. He held a small gift in his hand, purchased with his allowance, that he would give to Heather since her birthday was soon.

The clock ticked loudly as he sat there and waited for her. The door opened, and Justin sucked his breath in in anticipation. To his glee, Heather walked through the door.

“Justin!” she cried out, running to her big brother and wrapping her arms around him. He closed his eyes and hugged her tight.

They sat and played a game while they chatted away. They talked about school and their friends since they attended different schools. 

Justin gave Heather his gift, a small box wrapped in purple wrapping paper, which was her favorite color. He smiled hard when Heather opened the gift to see a stuffed otter, her favorite animal, inside the box.

She squealed, ripping the otter out of the box and hugging it in towards her chest. “My favorite!” she yelled. She jumped out of her chair, the otter still in one hand has she hugged her brother. “My favoritest animal from my favoritest brother.”

Justin couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m your only brother.”

Heather started to giggle, which resulted in Justin tightening his hold on her. Heather cried out in pain, which resulted in Justin letting her go completely, a look of concern growing over his face. 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t think I squeezed you that hard. I’m sorry!” Justin cried out.

Heather looked to the ground, her blonde hair falling in front of her eyes. “You didn’t.” Tears began to glaze her eyes as she lifted the hem of her shirt to reveal a large bruise spanning the side of her small body.

Justin curled his hands into fists when he saw the bruise. “What happened?”

Heather, still looking at the floor, said only one word. “Auntie.”

Justin saw red. He didn’t want to be separated from her to begin with and now he couldn’t even protect her. He looked at Heather who still wouldn’t look at him.

“Heather, do you trust me?” Justin asked his sister.

Heather looked up to him, tears streaming down her face. “Of course, I do, you’re my big brother.”

“Take my hand.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the time the adults had returned to the room, Heather and Justin were long gone. They searched the town trying to look for them, but they had no idea what kind of head start the brother and sister had. The waited at their old home, a stately 2 story house, thinking that they would eventually show up there, but they never appeared.

For some reason, Justin had been tempted to grab the credit chit that contained his inheritance from their parent’s death. He was reluctant to use it, just in case they could track them with that. He quickly opened up a new account to transfer the credits to it so they could not track them.

He stood there holding Heather’s hand while they waited at the Skycar terminal in their small town. “What do you think about going to Vancouver? Mom and Dad used to take us there on vacation and it’s a big city, they’d have a hard time finding us.” Justin asked Heather.

“Justin, I don’t know. But you’re my brother. And I trust you.”

The skycar sat down in front of them, opening the doors so the two could climb in. Justin figured they could wait to get clothes and other items until they got to Vancouver, to make sure that they didn’t get caught. He didn’t know what they were going to do when they got there, but at least they were together.

It seemed like forever in that skycar ride to Vancouver. Heather fell asleep on her brother’s shoulder; with the otter she gave him wrapped in her arms. They didn’t know what was in store for them, but as long as they were together, they could conquer anything.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vancouver was a lot bigger than what Justin remembered it to be. Everyone kept looking at them, two small children by all accounts wandering around in the dangerous part of the city without an adult was extremely peculiar. Heather began to tremble from the cold, which made Justin realize that they needed a place to stay for the night. Justin didn’t know what to do. He just pulled her along and kept walking along.

A teenager, no older than 13, was leaning against a wall, as Justin and Heather walked by him. “Hey kid, you want some red sand?” he called out to Justin.

Justin tried to ignore him and pulled his sister along with him. The teenager pushed off the wall and walked up to them. “Whatchya scared of? Talking to a big bad teenager?” the teen taunted them.

Justin turned to him, pushing Heather behind him. “Leave us alone,” he said simply, balling his hands into fists. 

The teenager started to chuckle. “You’ve got some spunk,” he started as he started to circle around the two children. “My name is Finch. I’m with the Reds.”

Justin looked at him skeptically. “What are the Reds?” Justin asked him, curiosity getting the better of him. 

Finch chuckled to himself. “We’re a family. We look out for each other.” Finch raised an eyebrow at them. “You two look like you could use a family.”

Justin couldn’t speak, but just nodded slightly. 

The teen reached out and put his hand on Justin’s shoulder. “C’mon. Let me introduce you to Curt. He’ll be able to get you two some jobs to help us out.”

Justin and Heather let themselves be pulled by this teenager, realizing that this was their only option if they wanted to survive in Vancouver.


	2. Chapter 2

Justin Shepard scanned the dark streets. Midnight was the best time to get what they needed. He could walk near someone and quickly get their bag or wallet and slip into the darkness without being seen. At just 17 years old, he became the best pickpocket in Vancouver.

Justin looked across the street to Heather who was hidden in the darkness. She was his back up if he needed it. She could swoop in and distract any man and gain the sympathy of any woman. At only 15 years old, she was wise beyond her years. Justin’s uncanny ability to pickpocket and Heather’s abilities made them the best duo in the Tenth Street Reds. Justin refused to do anything more than that, as the Reds wanted them to start pushing red sand, but Justin refused, not wanting his little sister to be involved with something as addictive as red sand, because he knew she was a biotic, even if she didn’t realize it yet. He hoped, for her sake, she didn’t. 

Justin spotted his mark. He could see a lone person walking right towards him. He couldn’t tell if they were male or female in the dark, but he saw the messenger bag hanging loosely on their shoulder. He signaled over to Heather, who nodded ready to swoop in if needed.

He waited until the person passed by his position, letting them pass and get a few steps ahead. He pulled his hood up over his head, covering his buzzed brown hair, and fell into place behind them. He quickly glanced over to see Heather ducking in and out of the shadows to keep her distance.

Justin looked up and saw a street light was out just about a block ahead. That’s where he would make his move. Heather saw the same spot and started to work her way up into position. She quickly crouched down between two parked sky cars, pulling her hood over head to mask her long blonde hair. 

Justin increased his speed and came up behind his mark. He reached out to grab the messenger bag’s strap. He quickly took it in his hand and pulled backwards, spinning on his heels to take off in the opposite direction. However, he didn’t expect to have the person turn with him. 

Justin was face to face with an extremely unhappy man. While not overly large, the anger in the man’s eye was enough to strike fear into Justin. His eyes widened and jaw dropped slack, his fear cementing his feet in place.

“What do you think you are doing, you little punk?” the man practically growled at Justin, spitting through his teeth. 

Justin couldn’t speak, paralyzed in place. “Nothing to say, huh?” the male said, flicking his left arm out, activating a bright orange omni-blade. He moved, lifting his arm as if he was going to slash Justin. Justin’s eyes grew wide as he saw the orange glow move closer to him. 

“No!” resonated through the darkness as Heather shot up from her hiding spot. She began to glow blue as she unleashed a torrent of biotics towards him. The man turned and Justin was able to get away before the powerful shockwave crashed into the man, smashing him into the building, his neck breaking with a sickening crack. 

Heather ran towards Justin and wrapped her arms around him, tears pouring down her cheeks. Justin stared off into space as he realized just how powerful his sister’s biotics were, and that he was no longer going to be able to hide this from her. 

“Is he dead?” Justin heard his sister mutter from his chest which snapped his mind back to reality. He looked over at the crumpled heap laying on the ground. The man’s neck was laying at an unnatural angle, confirming the sound he heard was his neck breaking, with a puddle of red blood pooling under him. There was no way he was still alive. 

Justin gently pushed her away. “We need to get out of here.” He grabbed her hand and started to pull her away as red and blue lights rounded the corner.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heather didn’t sleep well that night. Visions of what had occurred kept running through her mind. In all of her 15 years, she had no idea that she was a biotic, mostly because there had be no reason for them to manifest. 

She was nervous that the Red’s would find out. She knew that red sand made the biotics stronger, and they had been known to force biotics who worked for them to ingest it. 

But mostly, the fact that she had killed someone stayed present in her mind. She and Justin worked hard only to be thieves. If the Reds knew she had killed someone, she was worried that they would force her to move into enforcement, like they did a lot of the other biotics. She felt sick to her stomach because she had murdered someone. She only did it to protect her brother! That had to count for something!

She ran her hands through her long blonde hair, combing the knots out with her fingers. She always did that when she had a lot on her mind. And she knew that this wasn’t going to change any time soon. 

She looked across the small room and saw Justin sound asleep in his bed. How he could sleep with all that had happened, she would never know. 

Heather pulled her sheets off of her and threw her legs off the side of the bed. She might as well get some exercise if she couldn’t sleep. She placed her beloved stuffed otter in the center of the pillow as she threw on her hoodie that had been tossed over the back of a chair.

Their compound was quiet this evening. They had managed to secure a rather large warehouse that they were able to retrofit into a suitable living area. They didn’t have many people living there at this time, because a large group had been busted trying to smuggle in a new mix of red sand. They didn’t realize that one of the asari’s that brought them the red sand had double crossed them, giving them up to the Alliance. 

Their leader wasn’t a great deal older than them, but in his 24 years, Curt had become incredibly ruthless. He had made the Reds a gang to fear in Vancouver, so much that even the Alliance wouldn’t touch them. Heather could never figure out how they had only remained thieves when everyone else was so much worse. Despite what they had been through, Heather was still very naïve. 

She rounded a corner into the kitchen and came face to face with Curt and Finch. She had always liked Finch because he was the reason they were doing okay and managed to survive. 

“Well, well, well,” Curt started, “Never though you had it in you.”

“What are you talking about?” Heather asked, opening a cabinet to pull a mug out so she could get a cup of coffee, trying to act as nonchalantly as she could. 

“You smoked that dude over on Lexington. Couldn’t have been your brother, he’s not a biotic,” Finch said, continuing Curt’s initial thought.

Heather tried to remain stoic. She reached over to the coffee pot and calmly said, “I’m not a biotic,” pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Bullshit,” Curt said sharply, smacking the coffee cup out of her hand. “You think I’m dumb girl? You reek of eezo. Smelled it on you before, but I figured it was because you had screwed one of the addicts.”

Curt stepped up towards her. “You are going to be an enforcer now, just like the rest of those goddamn addicts. Finch will get you a pistol and have someone teach you how to use it. You go against me, your brother is dead.”

Heather sucked in her breath, trying to keep tears from forming. She was barely 5’4” and while she was muscular, she still wasn’t very big. She only nodded before turning to walk away as quickly as she could.

Once free from their sight, she broke into a run, running to the room she shared with her brother. She slammed the door a bit harder than she had wanted to, causing Justin to shoot straight up in bed, taking the best defensive stance that he could.

Heather quickly sat down on her bed and pulled her stuffed otter into her arms, losing her battle against tears as they started rolling down her face.

Justin pulled him self out of bed as he rushed to his sister’s side. She slowly rocked back and forth as audible sobs fell from her lips. Justin knew he just had to let her be for a moment, because she would speak, but only when she was ready to.

After several minutes, Heather’s sobs had subsided enough for her to speak to her brother. She looked up at him, her eyes rimmed in red, and simply said, “Curt knows.”

Justin pulled her into her arms and rocked her gently, tears burning under his eyelids. Everything he has worked so hard for, everything he had done to protect her was gone. He knew what he had to do now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is finally up! Life has a way of getting in the way of me working on fanfic, work, parents moving in for the summer. I'll continue writing and posting as often as I can!


	3. Chapter 3

Justin approached the Alliance base, which took up a large part of Western Vancouver. He knew this was one of their largest bases on Earth. Someone here would be able to help him.

However, he didn’t know how to find what he needed for this. Instead, he grabbed the first person that he saw, a dark-skinned man with a large N7 emblazoned on his uniform.

“Hey, you gotta help me,” Justin said to the marine who stiffened when Justin grabbed him.

The man, turned towards Justin, eyes assessing the situation. “And what exactly am I to help you with?” he asked Justin in a deep voice.

“I need to join the Alliance,” Justin blurted out. It wasn’t the way he had intended to say it, and realized this when the man raised an eyebrow at him.

“Listen, kid,” the man started. “Recruitment is over in that building over there. I’m just a marine. I can’t do anything about that.

Justin looked up at him, eyes pleading. “Let me explain,” Justin started, quickly going into the whole story of his life. Starting with his parents dying, his sister’s abuse, running away and joining the biggest gang in Vancouver for survival. And then the biggest part of the story of all, his sister being a biotic.

That last revelation is what caught the man’s attention. Biotics were still a rarity in humanity, and if humanity was to compete with the other species they needed to cultivate all biotics as much as they could.

“Follow me,” the man said, pulling his badge from his pocket to allow them entry into the base. “My name is Commander David Anderson, and we will help you and your sister.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Justin spent his day buried in paperwork, trying to figure out how to give the information they needed without giving too much away about themselves. He knew they had to have been reported missing years ago, and he couldn’t risk Heather getting sent back to that horrendous family, or worse, sent to foster care.

Commander Anderson furrowed his brow as he went over the paperwork that Justin had put in front of him. He knew from the story that Justin had told him, the paperwork in front of him wasn’t entirely accurate. He knew that the Alliance would be able to determine what was truth and what wasn’t and Anderson didn’t want to risk that. He knew in his heart, he wanted these two to survive and thrive within the Alliance, and lies weren’t going to get them there.

He set the datapad down and rubbed his temples. “Justin, this isn’t going to work if you can’t be honest on these forms. You’re claiming you are 20 years old and your name is Ryan Stapleton. I can’t let you submit this to my superiors knowing its not true. I need you to be honest, only then can the Alliance help you.”

Justin sat up in his chair a little bit more. “But if I tell the truth, they will know me and Heather are runaways and make us leave. I’m almost 18, and I can’t let them take Heather away from me,” he explained.

Anderson scanned through some of the lesser known documents that the Alliance had to help in these sorts of situations. “Here, read this,” Anderson said tossing the datapad over to Justin. “We can declare you and Heather official wards of the Alliance. No worries about foster care.”

Justin looked up at Anderson and smiled, his heart happy that he won’t have to send his sister back somewhere bad. He quickly signed his name, Justin Shepard, on the line and handed the datapad back to Anderson.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heather spent as much as her day as she could away from the Red’s compound. She knew what they wanted of her, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it, but she didn’t want anything to happen to her brother. She figured the more time she spent away, the less they could force her to be an enforcer.

She ducked into a small coffee shop she had never been to before. She couldn’t risk anyone recognizing her. She rifled through her black messenger bag, briefly grimacing as she ran her hand over the gun that Curt had given her. She quickly pulled out a datapad that she had snagged from a recent job.

For a while she stared at the datapad, unsure of what she should do. She picked it up and started typing. Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she wrote a letter to her brother, explaining that she had to leave to protect him. She quickly deleted that when she remembered that Curt and the others would go after him to get her back.

Then it hit her, they could leave Vancouver. It wouldn’t be easy and they’d have to start hiding some credits from the Red’s, but they could find a decent identity forger to allow them to find a transport to leave Earth. The Citadel was somewhere they could go. It was a place where all species could come together and survive, which is exactly what she thought they could do. She knew the Red’s had no footing outside of Earth, which meant she and her brother could be safe.

She quickly made her way through the extranet to find advertisements for identity forgers on Earth. She knew that the Red’s had several on their payroll, so she had to be really careful vetting who could pull off this monumental task for them. She was able to quickly eliminate most of them, when she realized that the Red’s had the market cornered on identify forgers in Vancouver. She sighed, slamming her fist down on the table, drawing attention to herself in the café.

She quickly gained her composure so others wouldn’t continue staring at her. Then it hit her, there were a few Batarians and Asari that lived in the underbelly of Vancouver that most humans wouldn’t associate with. They weren’t considered to be good, but in desperation, Heather sought them out, finding a Batarian forger that would work with them, and wouldn’t cost them everything to be able to do. She figured 2 months was all they would need to leave for the Citadel, which would be plenty of time for the Batarian to complete what they need, and time to book a transport to the Citadel.

Heather rushed back to the compound to talk to Justin. The forger would need their DNA to fool the biometric scanners that the Citadel seemed so fond of using. The sooner they could get Justin’s DNA to the Batarian, the sooner that they would get to leave Vancouver.

She quickly unlocked the door to their room and found Justin already tossing their meager belongings into a couple bags currently on his bed.

“What’s going on?” Heather asked him, tossing her messenger bag down on the chair that sat at the foot of her bed.

Justin spun around, ready to fight. He dropped his shoulders down and sighed when he realized it was Heather. He quickly closed the gap between them and took his little sister into his arms.

Heather was slightly taken back by this, keeping her arms down by her side, lightly tapping her brother on the side of his arm.

Justin pushed her back with a huge smile on his face. “I’ve got great news,” he announced.

Heather shook her head as she realized what Justin had just told her. “Wait, I was going to tell you the same thing!” she exclaimed.

Justin looked at her confused, as he realized that she had also been looking fro a way for them to get away. He quickly sat down and gestured for Heather to sit down next to him, which she did.

“I went to the Alliance today,” Justin started. “I worked with them so that I can join a junior Alliance program until I turn 18 and can fully enlist as a Marine.”

Heather just stared at him. “You said this was a solution, but all this does is separate us! You can’t leave me behind!” Tears started to form in her eyes.

“No, no, no!” Justin said, trying to calm Heather down. “The person I was speaking to, he said that they have a program for people like you, biotics I mean. They have this program called Project Ascension that will help you learn how to use them and then you can join the military with me fin a few years.

“I know we’ve never talked about anything like this, but it will get us out of this life. I know that it would be only a matter of time before either of us did something that we couldn’t return from.” Justin continued.

Heather stood up, her back to Justin, crossing her arms as Justin continued to try to convince her. “The Alliance will make us their wards. Which means, they won’t separate us. We’ll get to spend shore leave together, and they won’t ever send you back to that horrible person.”

Heather turned towards him, a slight blue glow coming from her fists. “Justin, I killed someone. I’m a murderer. They won’t want me.”

“You aren’t a bad person just because that happened,” Justin said, taking her hands into his, hoping that the blue would soon disappear. “You were just trying to save me. But you have to trust me on this. I want us to both have amazing lives, and if the Alliance is the way to do it, I think that’s what we should do.”

Heather smacked Justin’s shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Fine. You win. I guess your idea is better than paying an identity forger to get us off of Earth. But if this doesn’t work, we’re doing my plan.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barely a day had past before Commander Anderson had contacted Justin to inform him that everything was ready.

Heather reluctantly sat next to Justin. She had given him her word that she would hear this Anderson out, but secretly hoped that Justin would have given up on this silly idea. She just didn’t think the Alliance was for her. She wanted to be an engineer. She knew the Alliance could make her one, but she was certain her biotics would be the only thing they see.

Anderson set a datapad in front of Heather. She reached out tentatively and took it from him. “The transport to Gagarin Station leaves tonight. It will take roughly 14 Earth days to reach the station. The transport is a civilian one, but it will also be taking 4 other teenagers who will be completing the program with you. Its called Project Ascension, and you 5 will be the first ones to complete it and set a new precedence for biotic training in the Alliance. This will allow you to flawlessly integrate you into the front lines in the Alliance when you turn 18,” Anderson stated, as he watched Heather recoil, pulling the cowl of her hoodie up closer to her face.

“We will fit you with one of the new state-of-the-art biotic amps to ensure that you young biotics receive the best equipment as well. There are so few biotics among our ranks, and we want to ensure you succeed. As you progress through training, our dedicated instructors will help you specialize and you will complete specialized training as an adept, a sentinel, or vanguard, depending on how your biotics manifest.”

Anderson turned towards Justin, who sat there with a smile on his face after hearing in full what the Alliance would do for his sister. “I’ve arranged for you to attend a Junior Alliance Camp down in Rio De Janerio in Brazil. You will be working with our N program, which cultivates elite soldiers, helping them between trials, specifically, the N6’s working to become N7’s, the highest rank. Use this time to learn from them. Every soldier wants to be an N7, but it doesn’t come without sacrifice. You will stay with them until your 18th birthday, when you will be shipped off to London to complete your basic training, and from there, you will receive your first posting somewhere in the galaxy and you will begin working on your specialization as well.”

Anderson shuffled a few datapads in front of him. “Heather, you will be leaving on the freighter, the MSV Estevanico. It’s a civilian ship, like I mentioned, but there will be several Alliance members on the ship to escort you. Justin, your shuttle is an Alliance one, and will be leaving at Landing Pad Juliet, approximately 3 hours after the MSV Estevanico takes off.”

Anderson stood up and looked out the window of the room they had been sitting in. “Lieutenant Sanders will be coming here soon to set you up with Omni-Tools. They can be used for communication over the extranet, and will have multiple open slots available for tech options should you choose to move into a role that utilizes more tech, like a sentinel, or an engineer.”

A blonde haired woman appeared in the doorway, the doors sliding open for her. “Ah, Kahlee,” Anderson said warmly, turning towards her. “You’re early.”

“Well, no reason to force them to listen you for longer than they have to. The sooner we finish with the formalities, the better. Afterall,” Kahlee said, a warm smile on her lips, “this is the first day of the rest of your lives.”

Anderson nodded at Kahlee as he walked out the door. Kahlee helped the two of them quickly get acquainted with how to use their new Omni-Tools before excusing herself from the room.

Once they were alone, a tear ran from Heather’s face. “Justin, I’m so scared,” she cried, pulling the cowl of her hood up around her. “I don’t want to do this on my own.”

Justin pulled her into a hug. “Everything is going to be okay. They gave us these awesome Omni-Tools so we can stay in contact. And you are going to be an amazing biotic. 10 creds says you’ll be a sentinel, since you’re good with tech too.”

Sobs wracked Heather’s body. She didn’t want to do this without her brother. “How did I end up with biotics when you didn’t?”

Justin sucked in a breath. He thought he knew the answer, but didn’t know for sure. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may have been the car accident that killed Mom and Dad. It was a tanker that was full of eezo. I heard that eezo exposure in kids can cause biotics to manifest.”

He pushed Heather away, grabbing her shoulders as he looked her in the eye. “I know this isn’t going to be easy, but you trust me, don’t you?”

Heather wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Of course, I do.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They quickly said their goodbyes as Heather was shuffled onto the freighter. Tears poured out both of their eyes as they hugged each other. Heather held her messenger bag close to her body as she walked up to the airlock of the MSV Estevanico.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Holo calls each night. That became their routine. It had been about 7 days since Heather had left on the freighter to head towards Gagarin Station to begin her training as a biotic. Justin would constantly rave about the N program and told Heather that he was going to try his hardest to become one. Heather told of the beauty of open space, the planets, the stars, and how intricate the mass relays are.

Justin settled into his chair in the small dorm he had been staying in. He pulled up his Omni-Tool to call his sister, just like they had done every night. However, Justin noticed he had an alert waiting for him. He quickly opened it.

“This is an Alliance News Alert. The MSV Estevanico was attacked today in a joint attack by the Blood Pack and Eclipse Gangs. Alliance officials have stated that there are no survivors. This includes 5 young adults who were joining the Alliance’s Ascension program,” the male voice stated, void of any emotion.

“No!” Justin screamed. As one of the N6’s entered the room to see what was happening, Justin’s vision went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It lives!!! I haven't had a lot of time to write lately, but hopefully being on night shift for the next 8 weeks will allow for more story!


	4. Chapter 4

_2171 – London – Alliance Headquarters_

“Congratulations, and welcome,” Admiral Hackett said, finishing up the graduation ceremony.

Justin Shepard stood there, saluting at the Admiral. Nearly 6 months after the MSV Estevanico had been attacked, Justin completed his basic training and was looking forward to his first posting.

Justin held out hope that his sister was still out there, they never found her body, so he wouldn’t rule out hope. He hoped for a posting in the Hourglass Nebula near where the remains of the Estevanico remained. And maybe, just maybe, he could finally get the closure he needed.

“Where do you hope to go?” the small redhead next to him had asked. Justin and Susie had become quick friends while in training, but Justin had never opened up about his family to her. “I’m hoping to do outreach out in the Terminus Systems. I know the Alliance isn’t well liked, but considering I’m from Horizon it could do some good.”

Justin looked at her, he didn’t want to reveal anything about Heather to her. “Anywhere I can go to reach my goal of being an N7,” he said, trying to shift the conversation away.

He glanced over Susie’s shoulder and saw Commander Anderson walking up to him. Anderson had become a surrogate father for him, a mentor to help guide him along. Anderson knew that Justin had been struggling with what happened to Heather, and he was going to be damned sure that Justin became the finest soldier possible.

“Congratulations,” Anderson said to Justin, saluting him. “I hear you had the best aptitude scores in your class. Any idea what specialty you’d like to pursue?” Anderson knew that the sooner that Justin chose his specialization, the better off he will be.

“Either a Commando or Arms Master,” Justin replied bluntly. He had high scores in tech, but opted to move away from it. Tech was his sister’s thing, and it reminded him too much of her to pursue it.

“Really?” Anderson questioned him. “You had the best tech scores training had seen in the past 10 years. It would be a shame to not to utilize those talents.”

Justin hung his head down when Anderson told him that. “I know you miss your sister, but this is the way to honor her memory, and be the best damn engineer this Alliance has ever seen.”

Justin looked up at Anderson, his eyes slightly glassy. “Sir, yes sir!” he said to Anderson, saluting him again.

“Go out there and make me proud,” Anderson said to him.

_2171 – Daratar – Eclipse Depot_

Two Asari drug Heather by the arms into the sparsely furnished depot. Her blonde hair laid in limp strings around her face, some reddened by the blood that had been running from her scalp. They released her arms and she fell to the ground, laying next to one of the boys that were on the freighter with her.

Her head smacked against the ground, opening one of the wounds that was already there. She could feel the blood snaking down the side of her head. Her head was spinning, she remembered the freighter being attacked, but couldn’t remember much about getting there.

She knew that a bunch of aliens that she had never seen before attacked the ship. She heard them be called Vorcha and Krogan, but also heard Salarian somewhere there was well. She remembered that a Krogan and an Asari had cornered her in a room, and she unleashed a torrent of biotics at them, but after that, it was a blur.

Her head pounded where it had just smacked the ground. She looked up and saw a large group of Asari standing in front of her in yellow armor. They looked like they belonged in some kind of group, every armor matching. She could hear them discussing among themselves as she lost consciousness.

Heather came to sitting on a chair. The light stung as she opened her eyes. She saw a few well-armed Asari, Salarians, and humans before her.

“Welcome to Eclipse,” the purple skinned Asari in front of her said, her yellow armor standing out in contrast to her skin. “My name is Aria T’Loak, and I am the leader of Eclipse. You two pathetic humans were brought before me because these morons seemed to think you had some biotics worth using.”

Aria stepped up towards them. “I don’t see what they see in a couple of kids. I don’t want this to be a waste of Eclipse’s resources.”

Heather started to grow angry. All she wanted was to get back to her brother, and this asari was going to make this difficult for her. She could feel unfamiliar tingle in her hands as she saw a faint blue glow on her lap.

Aria smirked. She quickly threw up a barrier just as Heather unleashed a powerful shockwave at her. As her barrier came down, she said, “You’re gonna fit in just fine here.”

_2173 – Rio De Janerio – N School Facilities_

Justin stepped off the shuttle for the first time since he was part of the Junior Alliance. He had quickly excelled through his first postings, quickly gaining the rank of Junior Lieutenant and securing his placement in the N Schools. Granted, having Commander Anderson be the one to put his name forward was helpful as well, considering Anderson was one of the most well-known N7’s in the Alliance military.

He knew that these trials were going to be grueling. These were designed to test the applicants in the most extreme circumstances. He knew that this could be the end for him, because sometimes an N may have to sacrifice himself.

The past 2 years he could feel his hope of finding his sister alive slipping. He found himself becoming more ruthless each day. No matter what challenge presented before him, he succeeded. His skills as a Master Demolisher, an engineer capable of hacking and destroying any piece of equipment possible made him ideal for infiltration missions, which were always a success.

He passed through the first several levels of N training in record time, quickly reaching the rank of an N3 in just 2 months. Due to this revelation, they decided to create a specialized training just for him, in order to shape him into one of the greatest N7’s that will ever come out of the program. Within just a few months, he graduated as an N7, one of the youngest that the program had ever seen.

Anderson couldn’t be prouder of his protégé, but was concerned about the mental effect his rapidly developing ruthless attitude would cause. He knew that to be the best soldier you had to do whatever was necessary, but there is a fine line of going to far.

Anderson stood by and watched as Justin received his new armor, the armor that every N7 recieves. Black, with an N7 emblazoned on the chest, and a red and white stripe that runs down their right arm.

Justin hoped that Heather would be proud of him, that he accomplished his goal. He was an N7.

_2173 – Illium – Eclipse Base_

“No! You’re fucking doing it wrong!” Jona Sederis yelled, tossing a warp at Heather.

Heather threw up a barrier, barely able to keep the warp from hitting her. Her blonde hair was plastered to her face from sweat. She had been working on her barriers extensively in an attempt to grow her biotics even more.

Heather emerged as an Adept, mastering biotics in a way the asari never expected a human to. Aria had initially assigned Jona Sederis, one of the commanding officers of Eclipse to train her when Aria realized just how strong Heather’s biotics were. Aria never thought that Jona would be a good instructor, but figured that Heather’s personality would clash enough to knock Jona down a few pegs. Heather wasn’t going to need a lot of instruction, just enough to get it going.

Jona became a lot more ruthless towards Heather when Aria left Eclipse to take over Omega. Aria found an opportunity to overthrow the Patriarch. Aria tried to convince Heather to leave Eclipse and join her on Omega. Heather declined.

Little did Aria, or Jona for that matter, know what Heather was planning on her own.

A shockwave rippled back towards Jona, knocking her off balance. She didn’t expect Heather to drop the barrier and send that back so quickly. Heather had become a bit more reckless in sending different biotics toward Jona. She knew her time in Eclipse done, and today was the last day that asari would hurl insults at her.

During an Eclipse raid, she had encountered a Krogan Mercenary, who convinced her to move out on her own. She knew that she would do better on her own. And maybe, just maybe, being a mercenary would allow her to find her brother again.

_2178 – Torfan – Awards Ceremony_

Lieutenant Justin Shepard stood next to Major Kyle, his commanding officer during the invasion of Torfan. The Lieutenant stood still as the Admiral, one he couldn’t remember the name of, listed off just what Justin had accomplished.

The Butcher of Torfan, that’s what the press had been calling him. It didn’t bother him. It might have 7 years ago when his sister was still alive. The way he acted, at the cost of so many of his fellow soldiers, was everything he never wanted to become.

But that didn’t matter anymore. He eradicated those batarians responsible for the Skyllian Blitz, and he knew, that even if she didn’t agree with it, Heather would still be proud of him.

He received the medal, along with the Major, and stepped off the stage.

The Major quickly looked at the medal that had been presented to him, and tossed it in the garbage and turned towards Justin. “I hope you are happy. I didn’t realize that the Turian mindset had invaded our Alliance this way.”

Justin knew what he was referring to. “Victory at any cost.” Turians weren’t wrong with that one, he did what he had to, to make sure that the mission was a success. And if that gave him a turian attitude? Justin didn’t give a shit. There was nothing that was going to keep him from completing his mission.

Anderson always made sure to come to any ceremony that Justin was involved in. He watched Justin go from an idealistic child to a strong man, a brilliant engineer who could lead any group of soldiers in battle. Anderson couldn’t help but feel a pang of pride when Justin accepted that medal.

“Anderson,” Admiral Hackett said stepping up beside him. “We’ve begun collaborations with the turians on the Deep Scout Frigate. You are still slated for command of the vessel, we figure construction will be complete in about 5 years. During this time, I need you to determine who your XO will be.”

Anderson looked over to where Justin was standing. “There’s no decision that needs to be made. Justin Shepard will be my XO.”

_2178 – Citadel – Barla Von’s Office_

Heather stepped in to the volus Barla Von’s office, in her armor. She had become a trusted asset of the Shadow Broker’s operatives, one of the best that they had seen.

The combination of biotics and sniper rifles gave her a unique calling card. Most biotics preferred up close and personal combat, but Heather became known and desired for her ability to use both made her one of the most desireable mercenaries. The smell of eezo and a shot through the eye made it known she had been the one there.

They called her Kriegerin, as her identity of Heather Shepard was long gone. She adopted the name after one of her targets, an older German man, had called her a warrior, a Kreigerin in German.

“Ah, Kreigerin,” the volus wheezed. “The Shadow Broker was most pleased with your last job.”

Heather rolled her eyes at him. “And when have I ever done a bad job?” she asked, her hand on her hip, her purple armor reflecting in the white of the room.

“The Shadow Broker has a proposition for you,” Barla Von continued. “And it would be in your best interest to accept the offer.”

_2183_

Commander Justin Shepard boarded the SSV Normandy for the first time. “Welcome aboard,” Anderson said to him, cracking a smile at his XO. Justin couldn’t help but smile back. This was the first mission on the SSV Normandy, a shake down run on Eden Prime, something simple to test out the new stealth systems.

Heather boarded a shuttle to the Citadel. The Shadow Broker had wanted her to keep an eye on a mercenary that an agent had hired, a Krogan that had never done any work with the Shadow Broker.. If the Krogan didn't take care of the situation as intended, Heather was there to ensure it was. She wasn't one to let the Shadow Broker down. 


	5. Chapter 5

Eden Prime didn't go as expected. Within minutes, a newer marine, Jenkins was gone and a well known Spectre had been assassinated by another.

Justin shook his head, still recovering from the damaged beacon he had found on Eden Prime. He could see images of death and destruction in his mind still. He couldn't make heads or tails of what was being broadcast in his head. 

He looked out the windows of the med-bay and could see the members of his ground team standing out in the mess hall that was just outside the doors. He could see Kaidan Alenko, a biotic who was on his initial squad, and Ashley Williams, a soldier that had joined them after her entire squad had been killed.

Justin was quite pleased that Anderson had elected to let Ashley stay on the Normandy after Eden Prime. She could fight extremely well, and that's exactly what was needed if they were going to be facing the geth.

He had heard stories about the Geth when he was in N-School, mostly from some of the older instructors. It was very rare that they came into either Citadel or Alliance space, so most Alliance soldiers didn't know anything more about them than just the stories that they had been told or what they had seen in the vids.

Anderson had just left the med-bay and had told Justin to start making his way up to the bridge. They were about to arrive at the Citadel. However, Justin had been dreading facing either Kaidan or Ashley. He didn't like anyone seeing him so weak, and that beacon had nearly killed him. He didn't want anyone's sympathy. He just wanted to get the job done. 

Kaidan, however, was an interesting case. He couldn't figure out why, but there were certain parts of his personality that reminded him of his sister. He knew that they were such different people and there was no reason for him to think that. It was probably because she had been on his mind a lot lately because her birthday was coming up. She would have been 27 this year. He just didn't want any emotions clouding his judgement right now and he couldn't stop thinking about her when Kaidan was around.

Justin took a deep breath and went to exit the med-bay. He quickly scanned the room and found that neither Kaidan or Ashley were anywhere to be seen. Ashley had likely went down to the cargo bay to work on some equipment. Kaidan, well, he didn't want to think about what he was doing. He sighed in relief and took a step forward, only to find Kaidan standing right around the corner.

"Are you doing okay, Commander?" Kaidan asked him, concern clearly in his voice. "It was my fault that the beacon hurt you because I was stupid enough to approach it."

"It's fine, Alenko," Justin said bluntly. "If you excuse me, I'm needed on the bridge," he continued, a little bit more coldly than he had intended. 

Kaidan looked down, clearly looking dejected as Justin continued to head towards Joker and the bridge as they made their way to the Citadel. He almost felt bad for the way that he had just treated him, but decided that he couldn't. He had to stay strong and keep moving forward. There was a rogue spectre on the loose.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Heather made her way through security on the Citadel fairly easily. C-Sec liked to try to hold her up, but she was normally able to flirt her way out easily, or when she couldn't, she just placed a quick call to a Shadowbroker agent stationed on the Citadel to get her through. 

She knew that a Krogan named Wrex was the one that she was checking up on. There were quite a few Krogan in the wards and while she had a holo of him, she hoped it wouldn't be too difficult to track him down. 

She decided that her first stop would be C-Sec Academy to scope a few things out. From the dossier that she had received on Wrex, she made a bold assumption that he would have already been picked up by C-Sec officers for something. 

As she walked up the stairs to C-Sec Academy, she found out she was, in fact, right. She heard a loud, boisterous voice across the room. A quick scan of her omni-tool matched it to the voice print they had on file for Wrex in the dossier. This was confirmed when she saw him surrounded by 4 C-Sec agents. She started to chuckle and leaned against a pillar in the middle of the room. She stood there for quite some time, staring at the scene in front of her. However, unbeknownst to her, she had caught the attention of someone. 

"Is there something we can help you with?" a dual flanged, distinctly Turian voice asked her, catching Heather off guard. She quickly spun around, her hand moving behind her back where she had her small pistol concealed.

At eye level all Heather saw was blue C-Sec armor but when she looked up, she was met with piercing ice blue eyes. The Turian in front of her towered over her smaller frame. He kept his arms by his side as Heather dropped her hand away from the pistol on her back.

"Oh," Heather said, trying to feign as much surprise in her voice as possible. "You startled me!" she faked a little chuckle in her voice as she raised her hand to her chest dramatically.

The turian sucked his mandibles into his face. He couldn't figure out why, but there was something about her that wasn't sitting quite right with him. There was something interesting about her.

Heather had worked with enough Turians that she was able to read them fairly well. She knew quickly that he was seeing right through her facade, and she needed to change her approach, fast.

"I'm just waiting for my brother," Heather said, attempting to cover her tracks. "He's an officer, just getting off of shift."

The Turian crossed his arms and pushed his weight on to one hip. "Shifts don't end for another 5 hours," He said, with a hint of snark in his voice. 

"Shit!" Heather thought to herself, "He can totally read me, I've got to change my tactic."

She stepped forward towards him slightly. "I know," she said as seductively as she could. "I figured while I wait I could watch some of these big strong officers," she looked the Turian up and down, "especially the ones that are as handsome as you."

Heather had always found herself drawn to Turians, and the one in front of her was no different. She didn't have to fake flirting with him. What she didn't expect was for him to flirt back. 

"Well it's not every day that us handsome officers get vists from such stunning human women," he purred, his subvocals resonating. He couldn't control what he was saying. She had some kind of hold on him. 

Heather smiley coyly as she stuck her hand out towards him. "My name is Heather. And what can I call you besides Officer Sexy?"

"Garrus Vakarian," the Turian rumbled, grabbing her hand and holding on to it gently. His subvocals were out of his control, he didn't feel this way about human women, but there was something he couldn't explain about the one in front of him. 

"Drinks at Flux? After your shift?" Heather asked him, placing her hand gently on the armor covering his chest. 

Garrus found himself nodding yes. He just had to spend time getting to know this woman. 

Heather activated her omni-tool and sent Garrus her frequency. "Call me!" she said as she sauntered towards the exit. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Wrex getting shuffled into an interview room. She figured she could have everything sorted out with Fist well before she headed to flux. She figured she might as well have some fun while on the Citadel.

Garrus quickly collected himself before steppin on the elevator to the Presidium. The Executor was waiting for him to present the evidence that he found against the rogue spectre, Saren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it begins!!


	6. Chapter 6

Justin left Ambassador Udina's office and started to make his way towards the Presidium Tower to meet with the Council about what had happened on Eden Prime. He wasn't thrilled to meet with the council, because what happened seemed completely insane. How could he stand there and tell them the Geth had invaded, one Spectre assassinated another, and a Prothean beacon broadcast death and destruction into his head?

Justin shook his head and looked back towards Kaidan and Ashley who were following behind. It was reassuring to know that there were others who had experienced what he had, minus the beacon, but he had a feeling the council wouldn't help because of where Eden Prime was at, right on the edge of the Terminus System filled with pirates, slavers, and other unsavory folk. 

He sat and thought about what Nihlus had told him, about his candidacy as a Spectre. He wasn't sure what to think about it, but then he thought of his sister, and how proud she would be that he is considered humanity's finest. But he wasn't convinced that he would even be considered any longer, with him stating that the council's best spectre assassinated another.

Justin had never spent a lot of time on the Citadel prior to his arrival there. He spent maybe a day or two on shore leave there, but had never made his way to the Presidium. He was in awe of the stark contrast of white to the green foliage surrounding the large body of water. It was beautiful, and then caught himself once again thinking about how much his sister would have loved this. 

The trio arrived at the Presidium Tower. He could hear Kaidan and Ashley speaking behind them, but didn't pay them much attention at this moment, because he was more concerned about meeting with the council. 

The council's chamber was fairly dark, a stark contrast to how light it had been outside on the Presidium. There wasn't many people around but he could see two turians speaking not too far in front of him. 

"I need more time," the grey plated Turian with blue markings said to the other. Justin couldn't quite make out what they were saying to each other as they approached the Turians. The grey turian simply shook his head as the other one walked away.

The turian looked towards Justin, recognizing the N7 insignia on his chest plate. He had been told the human that had been out on Eden Prime was an N7, and there weren't many N7's in the galaxy. 

"Commander Shepard?" the turian asked, noticing a slight nod from Justin to continue. "Garrus Vakarian, I was the C-Sec officer in charge of the investigation into Saren."

"I take it you didn't find anything?" Justin asked him.

"Everything was hidden behind him being Spectre. I didn't have the access to the information. You saw him, my hope is that what you saw will convince the council," Garrus explained.

"I take it you don't like Spectres," Justin replied. 

"No, I just don't like him," Garrus said simply. "Best of luck, I have to get back to C-Sec." He walked past Justin and the others to head towards the elevator.

"Well at least he tried," Kaidan said, trying to make light of the situation. Justin found himself scowling at Kaidan, the stress of the situation finally starting to sink in. 

They saw Anderson in the distance who ushered them up the steps. Anderson spoke, saying "Good, you're here. The council is already in session," 

\------------------------------------------------------------

Heather stepped up onto the Presidium. She didn't spend a lot of time here, mostly preferring the wards. The Presidium was much too stuffy for her taste. She always felt out of place around the elite of the galaxy here. She always felt like she was looked down upon by them.

She stood out among them, arms with a generous amount of ink, while not fully covered, but enough to stand out in a crowd. She always felt like the humans stared more, which is why she always found herself staying around the other species. They never seemed to judge. 

She knew the Financial District was housed somewhere on the Presidium. She had been there once or twice to meet with one of the Shadow Broker's agents, Barla Von. One of the best financial advisors on the Citadel.

She could hear a hanar off in the distance, preaching about the enkindlers, their gods, is what she had come to understand. She didn't know much about the Hanar, just enough that she generally stayed away. 

She passed by the Emporium, thinking she should stop there and see if there were any new rifles that she couldn't get down in the wards. She found Barla Von's office with ease, considering it had easily been a standard year since she had been there. 

She could see her reflection before she entered his office. She quickly fluffed up her long wavy blonde hair and checked that her simple tank top was still concealing the small pistol in the small of her back. The doors slid open, and she was greeted by the Volus.

"Ah, Earth Clan, Kriegerin, to what do I owe the pleasure?" The Volus asked her. 

"My agent mentioned that you had hired the Krogan to deal with Fist down in Chora's den," Heather said, sliding into a chair in front of his desk. "I need the info you gave him. The Krogan is..." she started to trail off. "Indisposed. So i'll be finishing the contract for him."

"Ah yes," Barla Von wheezed. "I think you will find this satisfactory," he continued, handing the datapad over to Heather.

She frowned when she read through the details on the assignment. Fist was becoming an issue to her boss, and she knew that he needed to be taken out swiftly to ensure that everything remained business as normal. 

She quickly copied the information onto a small OSD to take with her. She stood up and began walking away. "Thanks again. I'll get this handled. You know the deal. If anyone comes sniffing for information, I don't exist." 

She left the presidium and grabbed a skycar to take her to the small apartment she had on the citadel. She stored her armor there when she was running around on the citadel. She always managed to grab the attention of C-Sec when she wore it, so she wanted to make sure that she kept eyes off of her for as long as possible. 

Especially when her job was to take down one of the most influential men in the Wards.

\------------------------------------------------------------  
Justin left the council meeting more frustrated than he had been in quite some time. The council refused to believe the reports, even with the reports of three decorated Alliance officers, couldn't even remotely sway them. 

Anderson and Udina told Justin he would have to be the one to gather this evidence against Saren to convince the council. He didn't know how he would accomplish that, but they gave him a few ideas. The C-Sec officer, Garrus, would be one he could talk to, and the other was a volus named Barla Von, who was an agent for the Shadow Broker who may have information on Saren. 

They quickly made their way to Barla Von who informed them that a Krogan named Wrex had information that they were looking for and that he was currently detained down at C-Sec for some reason he didn't know. He knew that the Krogan was supposed to take down a man named Fist, one who was said to have evidence that Saren had turned traitor. Justin needed to make sure that that didn't happen. 

Justin squeezed the bridge of his nose in frustration as he listened to Kaidan and Ashley bicker on the elevator to the C-Sec Academy. He tuned out what they were bickering about because he felt he was close to snapping at them.

Upon arrival at C-Sec he found a Krogan surrounded by a bunch of C-Sec officers, but it looked like he was being released. Justin quickly stepped up to him and bluntly told him, "Name's Shepard. I'm going after Fist. Wanna join?"

The krogan raised one of his brow plates at how forward the human was. "As long as the kill is mine," the Krogan growled. "Time's wasting. Let's move." 

As they headed to the elevator he could hear a couple of C-Sec officers mumurring about something that was going on in the Medical Clinic and heard the name Vakarian come up, which is the officer he needed to find. 

"We're sidetracking to the medical clinic. There's a turian there that I need to talk to," Justin said, hailing a cab to take them to the medical clinic. 

He hadn't realized how easy it would be for him to get people to help take down Saren. Garrus instantly jumped at the chance to join the crew, even though a slight sad look grew over his face. 

Justin watched Garrus make 2 calls on his omni tool. The first to C-Sec informing them he was taking a leave of absence and the 2nd to someone who didn't pick up. He couldn't read turian faces well, but he could tell that Garrus was a little upset that one didn't pick up. 

Garrus shook it off quickly and they made their way to Chora's Den to deal with Fist. 

\------------------------------------------------------------  
Heather stepped out of the sky car in front of Chora's Den. She could see groups meandering about as she made her way to the door. She stood out, most women there were dressed in skimpy clothing compared to her in a full suit of armor. Her dark purple armor shone as she stepped into the low lights of Chora's Den. She could see a group of Turians near the door who were whispering to each other. She thought she saw a flash of a firearm, but couldn't tell for sure. She had one mission: to deal with Fist.

She pushed her way through the crowd. It wasn't uncommon to have men in armor here, generally working security. He found an entrance guarded by 2 krogans. She approached them, and told them she was a merc hired by Fist to deal with some of his enemies. They quickly stepped aside and allowed her in to his private quarters. 

She smirked as she walked through towards Fist. It felt like things were just getting easier and easier. 

"Fist," she said, to the man who had his back turned to her. She crossed her arms and dropped her weight to one hip. 

"If you are here about the job, pays 1000 creds, and..." he trailed off as he turned around. "Kriegerin!" he exclaimed, dropping the data pad that was in his hands. 

"Shadow broker's not happy," Heather said, dropping her hands to her side as she stepped up towards him. "You've overstepped your bounds."

"No! He can have the information, I don't want it if its going to kill me!" Fist cried out, flinging the datapad towards Heather. 

"You've been a bad, bad boy Fist. I'm here to correct it." Before fist could react Heather tossed a singularity at him, the biotic field making papers fly across the room. He started to scream. 

"Shh shh shh," Heather said as she drew her sidearm. A single bang echoed through the room as the singularity dissipated and Fist fell lifeless to the floor. 

Heather sauntered over and grabbed the datapad off the floor. She quickly scanned through and found that Fist had set up a young Quarian girl to be killed. She quickly copied the information onto her OSD and took off out the side of the building, punching the coordinates into her Omni-Tool. She couldn't sit back and let the Quarian be killed. She knew that there was information that she needed that the Quarian had.


	7. Chapter 7

Justin, Garrus, and Wrex made their way to Chora's den only to be ambushed. First a trio of Turian assassins tried to get them as they headed through the wards. Justin surmised, and Garrus later confirmed, that they were hired by Saren to stop them from gathering evidence against them.

As they approached Chora's Den, they noticed something odd. There was no music. The music could normally be heard thumping away from quite the distance. 

"Hmm," Garrus muttered, "Looks like they've closed up shop today. I've only seen this happen twice in my time a C-Sec."

"Keep your eyes open," Justin said, pulling the pistol from it's holster. He quickly racked it, ejecting the prior thermal clip. "Something is wrong here."

Almost in unison, Garrus and Wrex readied their weapons. As they approached the door, it slid open and an unarmed patron ran through the doorway. Weapons drawn, the men moved against the wall as a splatter of red erupted from the male as his body fell lifeless to the floor. 

"Enemies everywhere!" They heard a voice from inside cry.

"We have to get to Fist. Wrex, with me, move up. Garrus, cover our six," Justin commanded as he swapped out his pistol for the assault rifle strapped to his back.  
The Krogan roared as he pushed forward on the right side of the room, unloading his shotgun into the chest of the first person he saw.

Justin inherently moved to the left side, clearing as he went, enemies piling to each side as he picked off the ones in his path. 

"Argh!" came a Krogan voice from behind him. Justin spun around, his rifle at chest level as the Krogan reached forward and grabbed the rifle, ripping it from his hands. 

A burst of orange shot from the Krogan's head as he fell to the floor. Justin looked back to Garrus who ejected the thermal clip from his sniper rifle. Justin shot him a thankful nod as they continued to clear the room. 

Soon, bodies lay strewn around Chora's Den. Justin turned one over using his foot as he asked Wrex, "Any of these Fist?"

"No," Wrex said, picking up a body to move it out of his way. "Fist doesn't slum it with the low lives out here. He's got a private office in the back." Wrex gestured to the door that was partially open. 

Justin forced the door the open as Garrus remarked. "These people are normally just perverted drunks. I wonder what happened." Justin simply just shrugged his shoulders as he walked through the doorway.

As they drew closer to Fist's office, the smell of Eezo began to grow stronger. Wrex dropped back to look through a couple of weapon caches that were laying open before they got to the office. Garrus and Justin rounded the corner to Fist's office only to see Fist laying in a pool of his own blood.

Justin chuckled and nudged Garrus with his elbow. "Guess this answers your question," he said, Garrus nodding his head in response. "Well, start looking. He's got the information stored somewhere around here."

Wrex entered the room and roared. "No! That was my bounty!: He pushed up towards Fist, kneeling down to turn him over. He saw the hole in Fist's eye and muttered to himself, "Kriegerin."

"What did you say?" Justin asked him, sorting through some of the datapads on Fist's desk. 

"That's who did this, Kriegerin," Wrex explained, not going into any detail as he checked Fist's pockets for an OSD.

"Never heard of him," Justin replied, opening an unlocked drawer on the desk. 

"Her, actually," Garrus stated. "She's a merc, someone C-Sec has been looking for for a while. Never been able to figure out her identity. Rumor has it she's working with the Shadow Broker. She's ruthless, skilled, and amazing at what she does."

"If I wouldn't know any better, I'd say you've got the hots for her." Wrex said, pulling an OSD off the ground, tossing it to Shepard. "Figures you'd be into humans."

Garrus balked. He had no idea that the Kriegerin was human. From the way she operated, he had thought she was either an Asari, or maybe even a rogue Cabal Turian. "I've never actually seen her, just her work," he said, stuttering slightly. However, thoughts of the woman he had met back in C-Sec got his head reeling. He didn't like humans, he just liked that one. 

"No shame in admitting it," Justin said, scrolling through the OSD he had plugged into one of the datapads. "There," Justin said, abruptly changing the topic to Garrus's delight. "He set up a meeting with a Quarian. According to this, the Quarian had information about Saren. By the looks of this, he's set it up to be an ambush."

"Well let's move," Wrex said. "If that data is worth killing a Quarian for, we can use it. Besides, I wouldn't mind taking out the rest of Fist's crew."

Justin nodded in agreement, quickly sending the coordinates over to Garrus who was much more familiar with the ward where the coordinates placed the Quarian.

"Got it," Garrus said, activating his omni tool. "Coords are placing the meeting point in an alley not far from here."

"Roll out, I'm not losing this Quarian," Justin stated.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Heather quickly found her way to the meeting place. She could see a mixture of Salarians, Turians, and humans. She cursed her self for not bringing her trusted sniper rifle. She couldn't see exactly what was going on and she couldn't evaluate what was going on. 

She could vaguely hear the Quarian speaking from her vantage point and could hear her heavily accented voice. She must be young, Heather thought to herself, anyone else would have been quieter. She did turn up her implant to hear what was being said.

"Where's Fist? He said he would be here," the Quarian questioned the unarmored Turian in front of her. 

"Relax, baby, he'll be here," the Turian replied, lifting his hand to run it down her arm. 

The Quarian ripped her arm away from the Turian. Heather couldn't stand creeps, so she dropped down from her vantage point to help the Quarian out. 

Heather quickly spotted a couple of visibly armed Salarians that appeared to be guarding the perimeter. The other's she couldn't see right awry, but she couldn't assume they didn't have anything hidden. She knew this could go wrong quickly if she wasn't careful. 

"I'm pretty sure she doesn't want you touching her," Heather stated as she sauntered up into the group. She could hear several firearms be drawn in her direction. This wasn't the first time someone had pointed a gun at her and it sure wouldn't be the last. She quickly threw her arms up in the air to show she wasn't a threat....yet. The Quarian quickly turned over to look at who was speaking.

The Turian that had been blatantly hitting on the Quarian turned towards Heather as well, his mandibles dropping slightly as he looked Heather up and down. Heather dropped her weight to one hip and crossed her arms.

"What's going on here?" Heather questioned. 

The Quarian was first to speak, stepping up towards Heather. "I had a meeting with someone," the Quarian explained, not wanting to reveal too much information to the person she had just met. 

Heather chuckled to herself, able to fully read through the Quarian's words. "Sweetie, Fist isn't coming. And Fist doesn't work for the Shadow Broker."

The Quarian stumbled on her words as the Turian shouted, "How do you know that?"

"Do you not know who I am? Do any of you realize who is standing in front of you?" Heather yelled, putting her arms out, spinning around. 

The Turian huffed as Heather stopped in front of him. "And why should I?"

"Because I'm the Kriegerin," Heather stated whipping out her pistol and placing a bullet right between his eyes.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Heather looked over to the Quarian as the final person fell to the ground. "Well now that that is over with, I'm known as Kriegerin, an enforcer for the Shadow Broker. But you can call me Heather. And you are?"

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," the Quarian replied. "If you know the Shadow Broker, maybe you can get me a meeting with him."

Heather chuckled a bit. "Even though I work for him, I still don't know who the guy is. His creds don't make me ask questions." 

"In that case, as long as you can get the information to him, I'll tell you." Tali continued.

\------------------------------------------------------------

Justin, Wrex, and Garrus could hear gunfire echoing through the alleyway. "Pick up the pace!" Justin shouted as he broke into a run. 

He came up to two people standing in the alley. One had to be the Quarian, but he had no clue who the other was. All he could see was the purple armor and blonde hair. 

"Hands where I can see them!" Justin shouted, his pistol drawn on them. 

He could hear the blonde hair woman sigh as she lifted up her arms. She spun around and looked up towards Justin.

"Justin?" The woman called out to him, her eyes huge as she looked at him.

Justin slowly lowered his gun towards the ground as he realized who was standing in front of him as he shouted out, "Heather!"


	8. Chapter 8

Garrus and Wrex looked at each other as Justin took off running towards the human female in the alley, enveloping her in a hug. Garrus looked closer and realized that was the woman he was supposed to meet for drinks at Flux.

"Heather, oh my god," Justin said, emotion filling his voice as he hugged his little sister to him. "I thought you were dead. Why did you let me think, after all of this time, that you were dead!?" He pushed her away slightly, his hands on her shoulders as he looked her in the eyes.

"I was captured by a merc group that hijacked the transport I was on. They decided to train me. I had no contact with anyone but them for years. By the time I did, you were already climbing up the ranks and I felt it was best to not get in touch. I didn't want to derail your career with me being a criminal," Heather said, tears running down her face.

Wrex stepped up towards the brother and sister. "You took my bounty," Wrex said, reaching to unholster his shotgun from his back.

Both Justin and Heather drew their pistols and aimed them at Wrex. "You're Kriegerin?" Justin asked his sister, glancing at her out the corner of his eye.

"Long story," Heather said, pulling her pistol down. "I'll tell you later. Wrex, you'll still get the money, I was just running cleanup." Wrex put his shotgun back on the clip on his lower back. "What are you doing here?"

"We got word that Fist had set up a meeting with a Quarian who had evidence against the spectre Saren, and we found that it was going to be an ambush," Justin explained.

"Oh, that info. Yeah, what Tali has will definitely help you out. Not sure what it means, but it should help," Heather said, gesturing back towards the Quarian.

"Tali?" Justin questioned.

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," the Quarian stated, stepping forward. "I have an audio recording of Saren that I managed to pull from a Geth memory unit."

"I thought those normally erased themselves," Garrus said, stepping up behind Heather. Heather turned up towards him, a sly smile growing on her face when she realized that this was the Turian that she met in the C-Sec Academy.

"With enough skill and a little luck you can extract pieces," Tali said, lifting her arm up and activating her Omni-Tool.

"Eden Prime was a major victory! The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit," the recording of Saren stated.

"And one step closer to the return of the Reapers," an unidentified female voice stated.

"That voice doesn't sound familiar," Justin said as Tali deactivated her Omni-Tool. "But Anderson and Udina need to hear this. Maybe the council will believe Saren's a traitor now."

"I'm coming too," Tali said, interrupting Justin slightly. Justin nodded in agreement, pleased with her forwardness here.

Justin immediately turned towards Heather. "You don't get a choice. You are coming with me. I'm not risking losing my sister again."

"Okay, big brother," Heather chuckled. "Lead the way."

Justin took the lead, his ragtag team following behind him. Wrex and Tali kept up closer to Justin, but Garrus fell back towards Heather.

"Well, this is awkward," Heather said as Garrus fell into step with her. "I ask you out for a drink and then you find out my secret identity, so now you'll have to arrest me." Her voice had a flirtatious edge to it.

"It's not on my agenda. I've taken leave to work with your brother," Garrus said, coming off a bit more formally that he intended. He could see Heather wince slightly out of the corner of his eye.

"Ouch," Heather muttered. She sped up a bit, trying to catch up with her brother, almost breaking into a light jog because of her height.

Garrus was confused as he continued walking at the same pace. He knew he had sounded a bit more cold than he had intended but didn't understand what just happened. Unless...

Crap, Garrus thought to himself. She thinks I just completely rejected her.

Garrus had never been the best with romance as it was. A Turian wouldn't have jumped to the conclusion that Heather did. But she wasn't a Turian, she's Human. He couldn't help but think that they were too different for anything to continue on.

\------------------------------------------------------------

The group arrived at Udina's office after the trek from the Wards back up to the Embassy on the Presidium. Justin heard Tali comment about having never been on the Presidium because she was a Quarian, so Justin was happy that he was able to do that for her at least.

Ambassador Udina scowled when he saw the large group walk through the door into his office. "Couldn't get the evidence without the assistance of the entire Citadel?" Udina snarked.

Justin rolled his eyes at Udina. He wasn't in the mood for dealing with this from him. He got the evidence that Udina needed. How he got it was irrelevant to him.

Anderson eyed the group in front of him. It was expected that Justin would have picked up the Turian and the Krogan based off of what Barla Von had passed along, but the Quarian was a surprise even to him.

However, there was someone there that he couldn't place. He saw another human that was mostly obscured by the tall Turian standing there, but he caught a glimpse of blonde hair, which meant it couldn't be Ashley, the female soldier they found on Eden Prime.

There was something that was oddly familiar about her, like he had seen her somewhere before. He watched Justin take a step closer to her, gently placing his hand on the female's shoulder as he could hear Justin saying something, although he wasn't fully paying attention to what was being said. He initially thought that it could be a girlfriend, but as far as he knew, Justin hadn't been seeing anyone.

And then it hit him. He quickly interrupted Justin's speaking to figure out if this is who he thought it was. "Commander, please tell myself and the Ambassador who these two females are."

Justin eyed him, a bit irritated by Anderson interrupting him. "I was just getting to that," Justin said, rolling his eyes slightly. "The Quarian, Tali, managed to extract some data files in reference to Saren. And Heather," he said, stepping away from his sister, "Saved Tali from the ambush that Fist had set up."

Heather smiled sheepishly and waved as Justin applauded what she had done.

"I've never seen you before," Udina sneered, still irritated by the large group in front of him.

Heather could tell immediately she wasn't going to like this man. She stepped up to him, in a saccharine voice, said. "My name is Heather Shepard. I believe you know my brother as Commander Shepard." She stuck her hand out towards the Ambassador who completely ignored it.

"Shepard's sister is dead," Udina said, snarling sligthly. "She died when mercenaries attacked the transport she was on."

"No," Anderson said stepping forward. "This is Heather Shepard, there's no doubt in my mind."

"Whatever you say," Udina muttered. "Commander, show me the evidence the Quarian found."

"My name is Tali!" Tali exclaimed, clearly exasperated by the situation. She raised her Omni Tool and played the clip she had extracted from the Geth unit, explaining how she was able to obtain it.

"The proof is undeniable," Udina said, smugness in his voice. "The Council will have to believe that Saren is a traitor. I'll go ahead and summon the council. You," he said gesturing towards Justin, "bring only 2 with you to this meeting. Don't need the entire citadel for this."

Udina left the room, leaving the remainder to stare at the Ambassador as he left the room. 

Justin muttered under his breath, “He’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

Anderson turned to him, “Say what you will about him, he’s good at what he does.” He turned towards Heather. “I’m glad to see you are alive. We all assumed the worst when the ship basically disintegrated and no bodies were found.”

Heather scoffed slightly, “They cleared the ship. Blood Pack sold the majority into slavery with the Blue Suns, but the Eclipse took the biotics. Figured they could use us instead of killing us.”

“I’d like to hear what happened at some point, but for now, make your way to the Council, I’ll meet you there,” Anderson said, walking towards the exit.

He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He figured he could try to convince Heather to join the Alliance and join the biotic squads, but for now, he needed to meet with the Ambassador.

Justin turned his attention to the large group of people that was standing around them. He figured he should abide by what the Ambassador had said and should only take 2 with him.

“Wrex, Tali, if you don’t mind, I’ll meet you guys over by the Krogan statue when everything is done with the council. Heather, Garrus, you are with me.” Justin said, gesturing for Heather and Garrus to follow him. He stepped out of the office, Heather and Garrus falling in step behind him.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heather’s eyes grew wide as she rode up the elevator to the Council meeting. She had never stepped foot into this building, much less been invited to a meeting with the Council. Granted how she lived her life wasn’t exactly something the Council approved of. She just hoped they didn’t know who she was.

Anderson shuffled the three of them in front of the council. They started discussing everything that had been found. Heather felt lost through the majority of it. She hadn’t had a chance to sit down with Justin to figure out what was going on yet, she only knew that Saren had done something bad, and that he was committing treason, and the evidence that Tali had proved that.

She heard the Council revoke Saren’s spectre status, and noted that the female voice was an Asari named Matriarch Benezia, one that she had encountered on Illium a few years ago. She figured this information wouldn’t be important at this point.

She didn’t know a whole lot about the Geth. Some of the mercenaries she worked with mentioned finding them around the Perseus Veil when working out in the Traverse, but she hadn’t gone there herself.

The concept of the Reapers? That was something that took her completely by surprise. Her eyes stayed wide as they talked about what they knew of the Reapers, completely overwhelmed by the information that she was hearing. If these were the threat that Justin thought they were, they needed to be stopped, along with Saren. She couldn’t believe how the Turian Counselor kept talking to Justin. She could feel her fists glowing slightly.

“I’ll go after him,” Justin stated, bringing Heather back to reality. “You don’t need to send a fleet. Send me.”

“No! It’s too soon. Humanity is not ready for the responsibilities that come with joining the Spectres,” the Turian Counselor snarled slightly.

“You won’t send a fleet in to the traverse, but you can send the next best thing; me. It’s the best of both worlds, no fleet, and humanity gets its spectre.”

“Spectre?” Heather blurted out, unable to contain her surprise of what she had just heard. She knew her brother had been doing well, but had no idea that he was a candidate for the Spectres.

“Shh,” Anderson said. The councilors looked to each other and nodded. Humanity was to gain their first Human Spectre. And that man’s name was Commander Justin Shepard.

“Commander Shepard, step forward,” The Asari Councilor said.

Heather watched as people crowded around the upper level of the tower, hoping to catch a glimpse at the induction of the first human Spectre.

“It is the decision of the Council that you be granted all the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel,” The Asari Councilor started.

“Spectres are not trained, but chosen,” the Salarian Councilor continued, “Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle, those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file.”

The Asari Councilor continued on. “Spectres are an ideal, a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council, instruments of our will.

“Spectres bear a great burden. They are the protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defense. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold,” the Turian Councilor stated, picking up where the Asari had left off.

“You are the first human Spectre, Commander. This is a great accomplishment for you and your entire species,” the Asari Councilor stated.

“We are sending you into the Traverse after Saren. He’s a fugitive from justice, so you are authorized to use any means necessary to apprehend or eliminate him.” The Salarian councilor finished.

“I’ll find him,” Justin said confidently.

“This meeting of the council is adjourned,” the Asari Councilor announced, exiting the room with the other two councilors.

Justin turned back towards his sister and Garrus. His sister was crying, clearly overwhelmed by what had just happened. Justin smiled and hugged his sister to him. He was so happy. The biggest accomplishment of his life and his sister was there to see it.

“Ahem,” Udina interrupted. “Anderson and I have a few things to discuss. You will need a ship and a crew to take down Saren.”

Justin quickly interrupted him, “I’m in charge of assembling my team. Garrus and Heather are my first two members.”

Heather and Garrus looked at each other, both willing to do what it takes to take down Saren.

Anderson nodded, but Heather could tell that Udina wasn’t happy with what Justin had said, but knew he had no authority to change that.

“Meet us later and we will discuss everything. In the meantime, I suggest you guys get ready to ship out.” Anderson said.

Justin turned to Heather and Garrus. “You guys ready for this?”

“Absolutely,” Garrus replied. He looked forward to this mission and to work with the human female standing next to him.

“I trust you Justin. I’m right behind you,” Heather said to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I do plan on staying loyal to the story, I don't plan on using exact dialogue from the game unless the situation warrants it to give this story as much of my own feel as possible. Both original dialogue and exact dialogue will be used.


	9. Chapter 9

Justin nodded to Garrus as he headed back to his apartment to gather his thins to begin the journey of a lifetime. As Garrus left their view, Heather ran up to Justin, wrapping her arms around her brother, the echo of their armor clanging echoing through the Citadel Tower.

“Congratulations, Spectre,” Heather said, tears of joy running down her face. “I can’t believe my brother went from a street urchin to someone so amazing.”

“I’m just happy that my sister got to see this happen. And that she will be able to join me on this adventure,” Justin said, breaking their hug.

“Are you sure you want someone like me on your ship?” Heather asked sheepishly. While Justin was becoming an Alliance hero, she was becoming the criminal he never wanted her to be.

“I’m sure we can work something out with Anderson and get you to become a member of the Alliance with me,” Justin said. “I’m the first human spectre. I’m sure I’ve got some pull.”

Heather chuckled as she and Justin started to exit the tower. “You know, I’m good with staying and helping my brother, the spectre, but I don’t think the Alliance is right for me.”

“Justin smiled at the revelation. “Deal.”

“I’ve got to run by my apartment and grab my things. Come with me and we can catch up on the way?” Heather said, as she hailed a sky car from the terminal in the tower.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
The sky car took them over to the Zakera Ward, which Justin found surprising because humans seemed to be in the minority there. The sky car stopped in front of one of the nicer complexes in the Ward. They stepped out of the car and hopped in the elevator to head up to Heather’s apartment.

When they entered the apartment, Justin’s eyes were immediately drawn to the large armor locker spanning nearly an entire wall of her apartment. Curiousity got the best of him as he approached the locker as Heather went to her bedroom to grab some clothes.

When the doors swung open, Justin’s draw dropped when he saw what was inside. Sniper rifles, assault rifles, shot guns, and more, everything he could possibly imagine. He reached out and grabbed the Revenant assault rifle. He had been wanting one of these, but the Alliance wouldn’t approve the funding for the rifle.

He turned it over and found initials engraved into the side, showing “J.S.” in an intricate script. His initials, he thought to himself. He ran his thumb over them as he felt a presence behind him.

“Perks of being a personal enforcer for the Shadow Broker,” Heather said, dropping her duffel down and stepping up beside Justin. “Some were gifts of the grateful, some I bought with some of my earnings. This,” she said gesturing to the Revenant in Justin’s hands, “I bought with the profits I earned from taking down a Krogan Warlord. Made me think of you when I got it.”

“It’s the rifle I’ve been dreaming of,” Justin said, still in awe of the gun in his hands.

“It’s yours,” Heather said, “When I got this, I always dreamed I would get to give it to you as a gift, so I had it engraved with your initials. Today, I finally get to do it.” She handed Justin a small carrying case out of the massive locker.

Justin couldn’t form any words as he stood stunned as Heather pulled her weapons of choice out and stuck them in her armor bag. She looked at him once more and he pulled her into his arms again, forcing her to drop her armor bag. Justin quickly noticed that and picked the bag up so they could make their way down to the docks.

The sky car was still there waiting for them as they loaded Heather’s items in and took off on the longer journey back to the dock where the Normandy was.

They sat and talked the entire way back, with Justin talking about his N training, the successes, the failures, while Heather talked about some memorable targets she had while working as the Kriegerin.

Justin looked towards his sister. “I’m guessing you don’t have anyone special if you just dropped everything to come save the galaxy with me.” He said, trying to say it as jokingly as possible to make sure that he didn’t offend her.

Heather rolled her eyes at him. “No, there isn’t. Most men kind of run in the opposite direction when they figure out what I do. There’s been more than a few guys who saw that armor locker and ran in the opposite direction.” She couldn’t help but think about Garrus and the quick crush she had developed. She tried to drive it out of her mind as she turned the questioning on her brother. “And what about you? Any special ladies in your life?”

Justin just chuckled at the question. “No, there’s not, and there never will be.”

Heather turned towards him. “What? Decided to dedicate yourself to the job so much that you can’t find a spot in your heart for a pretty girl?”

Justin shook his head, a little taken back that Heather wasn’t catching his drift. “No, its not that either. I’m gay,” he said. “And before you ask, there’s no special man either.”

Heather’s jaw dropped for a second as she realized what he had said. A big smile grew over her face as she smacked his shoulder. “We can totally go pick up guys together! Oh oh oh, wait, I know someone I can set you up with! Shit, no, he doesn’t go for Alliance guys…” Heather started to ramble on.

Justin quickly got her to stop speaking. “Heather, I love you, but I don’t want any kind of set up. If something happens, it will, but I’m not going to try to force anything.”

Heather thought about what he had just said, and decided she wanted the same thing. However, having Garrus on the same ship as her may prove to be more temptation than she could handle

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sky car dropped them at C-Sec Academy, where they were told to meet Captain Anderson and Ambassador Udina. Anderson and Udina had news for Justin, so he hurried off to go speak with them while the rest of the crew he had accumulated waited nearby, chatting amongst themselves.

Justin was floored when he learned the Normandy, and all of her crew, would be turned over to him. Anderson and Udina gave him a couple of places he could check in his start to hunt down Saren: Noveria, Feros, and a Prothean dig site to find Matriarch Benezia’s daughter Liara.

Justin hurried over to the mismatched group standing in front of him, comprised of different alien species and his sister. He told them the good news, but asked them to stay outside the airlock while he spoke to the crew of the Normandy. He knew that there was a lot of anti-alien crew members, so he wanted to break the ice as easily as he could.

Justin stepped through the airlock and was greeted by a round of applause. Every crew member, including Kaidan and Ashley, were there waiting for him.

“Thank you, thank you,” Justin said, his cheeks turning bright red.

From the back of the crowd, Justin could hear someone yell out, “Speech, speech!”

Justin chuckled slightly as he began to speak.

“I’m honored to become your commander. This journey isn’t going to be an easy one, it’s going to be dangerous. Humanity depends on us, and we are determined to take down Saren and keep him from bringing the Reapers.

“We can’t do this alone, which is why I have brought a diverse crew with me, because we need every edge,” Justin continued.

Kaidan and Ashley looked at each other, clearly both feeling offended because their commander had basically said that they are not enough to get this done. Kaiden stepped back around to go back up to the bridge to join Joker.

The airlock whooshed open and the ragtag group of aliens stepped into the Normandy. Justin turned back towards them. “These people want to bring down Saren just like the rest of us,” Justin continued as he introduced the group.

“And this one,” he said, pulling Heather forward. She had convienently been hidden back behind the much taller aliens. “Is my sister Heather Shepard. Effective immediately, she will be our Operations Lieutenant. She will oversee the engineering group as she has the most experience with unfamiliar tech and is a wizard when it comes to engineering feats.”

Heather turned towards her brother, her eyes wide. “Justin, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to do that.”

“You’re damn right,” Ashley piped up. “What credentials does she even have? She’s a common criminal.”

Justin turned towards Ashley, his eyes burrowing into her. “Gunnery Chief Williams, if you disagree with your commanding officer, I suggest you high tail it off my ship.”

“Sir, I apologize sir.” Ashely repeated towards him.

“That’s what I thought,” Justin said. “Settle in, we are headed to the Artemis Tau cluster to begin our search. Crew quarters are on the second deck,” he told the others, “But if you feel more comfortable, there is secondary housing located in the cargo hold of the ship. You can access this by the elevator. Dismissed.” The crew started to disperse and head back to their stations.

Justin grabbed Heather’s arm and brought her up to the cockpit where Joker and Kaidan were preparing the ship for takeoff.

“Joker, status report,” Justin asked, as he waked up behind him.

“All boards are green, we are ready to undock and head to the relay,” Joker said, spinning around in his chair. “However, you didn’t tell me about this,” he said gesturing back towards Heather. “I think I would have remembered if you had.”

Kaidan was the first to speak, surprising Justin. “That’s the commander’s long-lost sister. We found her in a back alley trying to find evidence about Saren.”

“Well well, I never figured the Commander for a having a family type. Much less one that worked the back alleys of the Citadel,” Joker said.

Heather shifted her weight on to one hip, clearly offended by what had been insinuated. “You see this,” Heather said, pulling a pistol out of concealment. “The last guy to make that joke has cybernetic knees now.”

“Oh, well, blondie, cybernetics would be an upgrade for my knees, but I get it, you’re a badass.” Joker said, throwing his hands up.

Heather groaned as she listened to Joker rattle on. She looked back towards Kaidan, who never seemed to stop looking at her from the moment when they walked into the cockpit. She looked back towards Justin and asked “Can you take me to where the quarters are so I can get settled in?”

“I’ll do it!” Kaidan practically shouted, causing Heather to jump slightly. He was practically out of his chair before Heather had a chance to say no.

“We’ll go down to the cargo bay first,” Kaidan said. “That way you can grab your gear to get everything set up, and get out of your armor” He grabbed Heather’s arm and practically drug her off to the cargo bay.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heather politely listened to Kaidan rattle on and on. She felt like the words went in one ear and out the other, with nothing being retained except for the fact he was also a biotic. Justin also hopped on the elevator to head down to make sure his other crew was settling in well.

Heather practically made a mad dash to the storage lockers the minute the elevator door opened. She could see her armor bag laying not to far from a row of lockers near the armorer’s bench. She saw Garrus putting his armor and weapons in, and rushed up to him.

She pulled her bag up to the locker next to his and unzipped it to start loading her weapons and armor in. “So what job did you pull?” She asked trying to nonchalantly start a conversation.

“Mako repairs,” Garrus said as he loaded his rifle into the locker after checking it was clear. “Which is good, because I have some experience with mechanical stuff from my time in the Turian military.”

He looked over to Heather who had just finished putting her armor in after stripping it off of her, leaving her in just a tank top and shorts.

“I don’t know what my brother was thinking by making me a ‘lieutenant’ or whatever he called me,” Heather said, reaching into her bag to pull out a custom silver Viper sniper rifle.

Garrus’s eyes followed the rifle from the back to the storage locker. It wasn’t often that you saw another sniper, much less a female one. “Your brother means well,” Garrus tried to explain. “He just wants to make sure that you have a role here on the ship besides just being his sister.”

Heather turned around and leaned back towards the locker, closing her eyes. “I know, but I just don’t know how to be what he wants.”

Garrus reached out and put a gloved hand on her shoulder. He could feel the heat of her skin radiating through his gloves. “I’m sure he has a reason for this, especially if you are as amazing as he thinks you are, as I think you are.” He was determined not to make the same flub as he did before.

Heather’s skin turned bright red. Garrus didn’t understand what was going on. He knew human skin colors could change, but he had never seen it in person. He hoped that he hadn’t gone too far so soon, but previous to this she had been so forward and upfront with him. She smiled, but struggled finding words to come to her. She looked around the room, hoping to find something she could use to segue away from this conversation.

Heather quickly turned and dug back into her armor bag, pulling out her Black Widow rifle. She didn’t really use this much, but felt that she could use the firepower for what they were up against.

The shining black caught Garrus’s eye. “Is that the Widow?” Garrus questioned.

Heather smiled and turned back towards him, the embarrassment she had previously leaving her. “No, it’s the Black Widow, bigger clip, bigger capacity. Want to see?” she asked.

Garrus nodded enthusiastically, as she handed him the rifle. She smiled when she saw his eyes light up when looking the rifle over.

They continued to chat about their different weapons that they had, about illegal mods, and anything else they could possibly think of. Time passed so quickly that it was late into the evening cycle before they realized just how much time had passed.

“Dear lord,” Heather said, checking the time. “I’m supposed to be up in 3 hours to go over some officer stuff with Justin before we reach the Artemis Tau cluster.”

They heard a door slide open and Justin walked out into the mess hall where they were sitting. He looked dazed and confused as he saw Heather and Garrus sitting there. He didn’t say a word, just turned back into his quarters and closed the door.

The two began to chuckle, and decided that it was time for them to part ways for the night. Heather headed back towards the med bay, where Justin had converted a storeroom for her to stay, and Garrus headed back towards the elevator to head to the quarters set up in the cargo bay. They smiled and said goodnight as the doors to the med bay closed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not dead!! Between OT at work, house guests, and everything else life can throw at you, I finally have a chapter that is ready to go! And hopefully a more regular posting schedule!


	10. Chapter 10

Heather had been settling into the Normandy well. It worried her for a minute, because she had been on her own for so long, but she found herself able to move through the crew and become closer to them as they approached their first destination, which her brother had determined would be Therum.

There was a part of Heather that was really excited to finally be on the good side for once, not the Kriegerin that is known for her ruthless executions sold to the highest bidder. This, this was something that she always wanted, to do good in the galaxy. And she was thrilled that she gets to do it along side of her brother.

Heather couldn’t help but notice that Justin seemed to have changed over the past years. Once fairly extroverted, she noticed him turning away and spending more time alone than she remembered. He had the bare minimum of interactions with the crew, with the exception of herself and Kaidan. The only reason she thought he talked to Kaidan was because his work station was right outside of his quarters.

Heather looked at the clock on her Omni-Tool and found that it was about time to make her rounds as the Operations Lieutenant. It still bothered her that Justin appointed her to this role, but was flattered at the same time. She wanted to do the best that she could, and she felt the best way to do that was to be open with the crew and to check in with how they were doing.

She checked the small mirror that she placed on the desk in her sparce quarters. Her long blonde hair fell in waves that she gathered and tied into a low side ponytail. She raked her fingers through it, thinking that she was going to get it cut the next time that she was on the Citadel. She smoothed out her tank top over her pants. Justin had given her a couple Alliance issued uniforms, but she didn’t feel comfortable in them, instead choosing to wear a basic tank top and BDU style pants. That way she wouldn’t stick out completely like a sore thumb.

She finished tying her shoes and walked out through the med bay, giving Dr. Chakwas a polite nod as she went to head towards Justin’s quarters. She had a few things she wanted to discuss with him, and figured he was probably up, just avoiding the crew.

Unsurprisingly, Kaidan was at his post working away on something that Heather didn’t understand. In her rounds, Kaidan had tried to explain it to her, clearly enjoying what he was working on, but Heather could only feign interest in it. It was nice to see him passionate about that, because she felt that he was a bit too by the book for her liking.

He was nice enough, but Heather would continually catch him staring at her chest or staring at the ink that decorated her arms. She tried to ignore it, but it became increasingly more frequent. Occasionally, she could also hear his voice taking on a more flirtatious tone, which she would catch immediately. She tried to be as blunt as possible, but found that he wasn’t catching on like she wanted him to.

She briefly waved at Kaidan as she headed to Justin’s cabin. She watched him start to walk towards her, but found herself waiting in front of a locked door. She couldn’t help but tap her foot impatiently, briefly looking back towards Kaidan who was still heading towards her. Suddenly, the door whooshed open and Heather pushed Justin on the chest pushing him back in and closing the door behind them.

Justin couldn’t hide the look of shock on his face when his sister was suddenly pushing him back towards the cabin. He realized that Heather was probably avoiding Kaidan. She never said it straight out, but he could read her like a book and knew that she didn’t enjoy spending time around him.

As Justin opened his mouth to speak, Heather cut him off. “Not a word, brother. It’s too early to deal with that and I haven’t got my caffeine yet.” Heather said, walking towards the small couch and sitting down on it. “I wanted to talk to you about the mission on Therum. I wanted to say, I want to go with you.”

Justin turned towards his sister. “I was already planning on that. Since the Mako can seat 4, I figured we’d run with a group of 4. Me, you, and then I was thinking Vakarian and Alenko. I want to see if Vakarian is as good of a shot as he is claiming and I wanted to Alenko there so that way you guys can combo your biotics well,” he explained, tossing a data pad to Heather to show her his mission plan.

“Ugh,” Heather muttered under her breath. “Anyone but him would have been a good choice.”

Justin straightened up. He wasn’t supposed to have heard what he did there, but he didn’t know who she was referring to. She knew that Kaidan wasn’t her favorite, but had no clue about Garrus. “I didn’t think Vakarian coming along on the mission was going to be an issue for you. I don’t tolerate xenophobia here. If it’s that big of an issue, you can stay on the ship.”

Heather dropped the data pad and stood up quickly. “No, no! That’s not who was referring to. It's Alenko. The guy can’t stop staring at my tits long enough to actually pay attention to anything. I don’t particularly enjoy being around him,” she said quickly, trying to explain what happened. “Garrus and I met before we came on the Normandy, and we spent the first night on the ship up all night talking. Him, I trust. Alenko, not so much.”

“You need to give him a chance,” Justin said, “Kaidan is a really good guy and a really strong biotic.”

Heather raised an eyebrow at her brother. “So it’s, ‘Kaidan’ now?” She started to chuckle, because she knew her brother well. “It’s not his biotics you want on the mission, it’s him. You like him.”

Justin began to stammer. He hated how well his sister could pick up on these types of things. She was always the first to know if he had a crush, even if she didn’t know who it was on. “I, uh, no, uh….” Justin said, eventually dropping his chin down to his chest. “Ok, I do, but the Alliance has rules against fraternization, he’s my subordinate, and plus I just don’t think that he likes men given that he won’t stop staring at you.”

Heather stepped up towards Justin, putting her hand lightly on his arm. “It’s okay. I think it’s adorable that you like him. You don’t have to worry about me and him anyway. I prefer men of other species. Being a merc in a predominantly non-human group can make you see things a different way. And regardless, you guys would be really cute together should you decide to pursue something.”

Justin smiled at her and was so grateful that his sister was so accepting of who he was. He pulled his sister in to a hug. “This wasn’t the only reason you came over here was it?”

“No,” Heather said pulling away from him. “I’ve noticed that you’ve…changed a little bit over the years. I don’t want you to hide away in your cabin and not talk to the crew. It may be tough but you really should! There’s some great people working on this ship.”

Justin tried to shake his head, but he knew that his sister was right. He didn’t want to have that happen, but losing her is what drove him away from others. But now that she was back, he knew she would push him to be a better commander. And he wanted that.

“Anyway, I promised Ashley I’d work on some of the rifles with her. She damn near fried hers on the last mission.” Heather wandered back over to the door to leave. As she stepped through the threshold, she popped her head back in and said to Justin, with a smirk on her face, “Oh, and I’ll be sure to tell Kaidan that you are looking for him.”

Before Justin could protest, the doors slid shut and he sighed. Heather was never going to let this go now.

Heather chuckled as she headed over to the elevator. She wasn’t going to tell Kaidan that Justin was looking for him. She just wanted to rile her brother up, and was thrilled that she was able to do that without a lot of work.

But she could feel eyes boring down on her as she walked away. She suppressed a shudder as she rounded the corner. To her delight, the elevator was already on this level, so she hopped in quickly, using her Omni-Tool to make the doors close quicker.

She leaned back against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. She just did not want anything to do with him, even less now that she discovered her brother was interested in him, but she believed Kaidan was bound to make this difficult.

The elevator door slid open and Heather stepped out, the cargo bay alive with movement. She scanned the room and saw Garrus at the small computer console beside the Mako, Wrex was punching a bag in the back corner of the bay, and Ashley was standing at the weapons bench. Heather quickly made her rounds through, heading down to engineering to find Tali and Engineer Adams. She was absolutely thrilled to see the Quarian settling in so well. She could tell that she and Tali were bound to be life long friends.

Wrex tried his hardest to goad her into sparring with him, which was tempting. Ultimately, she decided against it because she didn’t want to be messed up for the mission on Therum.

“I’m holding you to it, Wrex said, almost menacingly. “The last time we worked together, I didn’t even get to see you in action before I hightailed it out of there.”

Heather cocked her head at him. “Wrex, we’ve never worked together before,” she said, curious as to where he was going with this.

“You don’t remember?” Wrex said, crossing his arms and leaning up against the bulkhead. “We both worked for Saren, the cargo ship raid.”

Heather started to chew on her thumbnail. “Wrex, I’ve never worked for Saren. I remember what you are talking about, but I went as an envoy for the Shadowbroker to meet with the Turian in charge of the job, but that was it.”

“That was Saren. He contracted my merc group to clean out the ship. I remember seeing you talking to that Turian before I left.”

“He never told me his name, only called me ‘human’ and reluctantly gave the information the Shadowbroker wanted,” Heather said quietly, reeling in the revelation. She knew something had been off on that mission, but once she left, she put it out of her mind.

“After you signed up with your brother, didn’t you even look up who we were going after?” Wrex questioned.

Heather shook her head. It was something she had been meaning to do, but in the course of settling into the ship she hadn’t gotten around to it.

Wrex pulled up his Omni-Tool and pulled up a picture of Saren to show Heather. All of the color drained from her face as she swallowed hard. Wrex put a big hand on her shoulder as he said, “You realize we are the only 2 survivors of that mission? Everyone else was found dead about a month later, execution style.”

Heather shuddered slightly, which Wrex felt under his hand. She remembered that it had felt like there was something wrong behind her, like there was a gun pointed at her, but never actually saw anything. She tried to push everything away and deflect the best that she could. “Well, shit Wrex, now I will have to really beat your ass,” she tried to joke as she smacked Wrex on the shoulder, her voice a bit shakier than she intended.

The Krogan in front of her chuckled, slapping her on the shoulder. “Now that’s what I like to hear,” Wrex said boisterously.

Heather turned around and walked away from Wrex, still stunned by what he had said to her. To be frank, she didn’t care who was on that job, because she was contracted to do it, and that was that. She completed her mission and moved on.

She couldn’t help but be worried that, if given the chance, Saren might try to kill her because of what she knew. She also knew that at some point, she was going to have to tell Justin. But today was not that day.

Heather smiled at Garrus who looked up at her while she was walking over to the weapons bench. She hoped that Garrus wasn’t able to read human emotions well, because for as much as she enjoyed spending time with him, that smile was fake.

She stepped to Ashley who had one of the standard issue Avengers disassembled on the table in front of her. Ashley was cleaning it and adjusting some of the internals since the rifle had been used so heavily on Eden Prime.

“How’s it holding up?” Heather asked her, turning around so her back faced the wall.

“Frankly, it’s not designed to go toe to toe with the geth or whatever those husk things were. I broke a few springs inside from smashing the rifle butt against them. I’m surprised it could even fire by the end of it,” Ashley explained, holding out her hand which contained a pile of mangled springs.

“Damn, I’d say,” Heather said with a low whistle. “I normally see this type of damage when dealing with Varren, but Avengers aren’t really built for that kind of combat. You need something a bit heavier duty, like a Mattock or a Revenant.”

Ashley shook her head. “Those aren’t on the Alliance Requisition Lists,” she explained which caused Heather to frown. She had a couple of Mattocks back at her apartment she may have to get when they reached the Citadel. She had already given her only Revenant to Justin.

“Wait, I know!” Heather exclaimed, reaching into the cargo pocket of her BDU’s and pulled out a small attachment to the rifle. “This is an Omni-Blade for the rifle. I got it on Omega the last time that I was there,” she said with a smile on her face, this one genuine.

She walked over to the reserve rifles lined up against the wall and pulled one off. She ensured the rifle was clear and safe as she walked back over to the bench, quickly attaching the blade on the rail underneath the barrel of the rifle. She spun around, gesturing for Ashley to follow her as they stepped to a place where there was no one around. “Activation is simple, simply hit this button,” she started, smacking the orange button on the side of the attachment, “and bam! The Omni-Blade activates and you don’t have to use the butt of the rifle. Just simply stab or swipe away.” She quickly worked over to Garrus, who had a smirk on his face, clearly impressed that she had one of those. She shot him a quick wink before looking away, hoping that no one noticed.

She deactivated the blade and walked back over to the bench and set the rifle down, unscrewing the attachment and handing it to Ashley. “You just randomly carry one of those around in your pocket? What if it activated?” Ashley asked, some snark in her voice.

Heather scoffed slightly, rolling her eyes. “These two buttons have to be depressed under to make it activate. And besides, a girl’s gotta have some secrets,” she said starting to chuckle by the end of it. “Now, I think I have some stronger springs for you rifle as well.”

The two chatted mindlessly as they cleaned the gun parts. Ashley told stories about her sisters and her father, and Heather talked about what life was like as a mercenary.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed Heather’s shoulder. She felt all of the color drain from her face and her fight or flight instincts took over. She reached up and grabbed the hand that held onto her shoulder and pulled hard, hoisting whoever it was over her shoulder, her vision blurring out.

The person landed on the bench in front of her and Ashley. Heather raised her fist, breathing heavy, as crackling blue biotics pulsed through her arm. She vaguely saw the person laying on the bench raise their arms in surrender. She closed her eyes as she lowered her fist back down, the bright blue biotic energy fading away. She opened her eyes, her vision returning to see her brother laying on the weapons bench in front of her.

Immediately, tears began to well up in Heather’s eyes. She couldn’t control her reaction. She didn’t mean to do that, especially not to her brother.

Justin was panting as he watched his sister come back down to reality. He quickly scanned the room and saw that they had garnered the attention of almost everyone in the cargo bay.

“Well, lesson learned,” Justin chuckled, trying to make light of the situation, “You don’t sneak up on biotic mercenaries, especially ones known as the Kriegerin, like that.” He was trying to joke the best that he could, but what he saw from his sister did frighten him.

Heather couldn’t form any words. Small tears began to run down her face as she turned and started to walk quickly to the elevator. She couldn’t believe that had just happened, and was completely embarrassed, because she let this revelation about Saren completely alter how she acted and made her react violently to something she never would have thought twice about.

Justin scrambled off the table and started to run after his sister. “Heather, wait!” he called out.

Heather stopped dead in her tracks, just a couple of steps away from where Garrus was working on the Mako calibrations. Her head hung down, her hands balled into fists at her side.

Justin made sure to approach her loudly this time, making sure that she heard him. He quickly looked over to Garrus who nodded and stepped away to where Wrex was at.

Justin put his hand on his sister’s shoulder gently, which resulted in her spinning around and throwing her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she cried tears pouring down her face.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Justin hushed. “It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I should have made my presence be known. You’ve always been jumpy.”

“I almost hurt you, Justin. I almost wasn’t able to control what I was doing,” Heather said, her words marred by her tears.

“Head up to your quarters. I’ll come see you when I finish up down here,” Justin said, pushing her gently away from him. “We will talk about what happened.

Heather nodded quickly and took off to the elevator. The doors slid shut and removed her from view.

“Nothing else to see here, folks,” Justin shouted, his voice echoing through the cargo bay. “Show’s over.”

Garrus stepped back towards the console he had near the front of the Mako. It took every fiber of his being not to chase after Heather when he saw her leave. He couldn’t help but be worried about Heather and what he had just saw. “Is she okay?” Garrus asked Justin tentatively. He didn’t know how much information that Justin would divulge to him.

Justin looked back up towards the elevator that Heather just left in. “She will be,” Justin said firmly, confident that everything was going to be okay. He swung back around to face Garrus. “That being said, I wasn’t you on the ground team for Therum.”

Garrus shook his head in acknowledgement. “I’ve almost got the Mako’s cannon software upgrade finished. It will be fully functional by the time we reach Therum, but I will need to work on some further calibrations after that,” Garrus explained pointing to the progress bar.

Justin wanted to use this time to do what his sister had recommended, which was get to know the crew better. “What software are you using to upgrade it?” Justin asked him.

Garrus’s mandibles flared in excitement as he explained all about the program he had chosen, while Justin stood there and asked questions to get clarification where needed.

The elevator hissed open and Heather took off towards the Med Bay. The quick movement caught Kaidan’s eye. Heather quickly activated the doors and went through them, using her Omni-Tool to close the doors immediately behind her. Dr. Chakwas raised an eyebrow at her, but realized that there was something else at play that could be discussed later. She watched as Kaidan left his post to peer through the Med Bay windows, trying to see what was going on with Heather.

Not more than 15 minutes later, the elevator opened again and Justin exited, heading towards the small quarters behind the Med Bay. He noticed Kaidan staring through the Med Bay windows, gazing back towards the door in the rear of the bay. He stiffened up at this, a bit annoyed that Kaidan was fawning over her so much because she had made it clear she wasn’t interested in him at all.

The two locked eyes as Justin walked towards the door of the Med Bay. Justin gave him a look telling him to return to his duties as he headed to his sister.

He nodded to Dr. Chakwas as he opened her quarters, finding his sister laying face down on the cot they had requisitioned for her. He came and sat down beside her, using his hand to rub her back gently. He looked over and noticed 2 stuffed animals on her bed. One was a replica of the otter he had gotten her many years ago and the other was a black cat with a small patch of white on its chest.

Heather’s sobs began to subside. She rolled and sat up, grabbing the stuffed otter and placing it in her arms. “Are you ready?” Justin asked her.

She nodded and began to speak. She told Justin about the job she had worked, about how she didn’t it was Saren, and how she felt like she should have died that day, and the fact that she felt Saren may still try to kill her.

Justin sat and listened intently; his brows furrowed together. He felt his anger growing when she talked about Saren. Everything always linked back to Saren in some way, and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on the bastard even more.

He wrapped his arm around his sister’s shoulders, reminiscent of what he used to do when they were younger as she laid her head on his shoulder. They didn’t say a word, they knew that they were in this together, and they would forever have each other’s backs.

Joker’s voice came over the intercom. “Shore party, arrival in Therum in 20 minutes. Gear up and meet at the Mako.”

“I guess that’s our cue,” Justin said slapping his knees as he brought his arms down. “You ready?”

Heather wiped the remaining tears from her face. “I’m always ready. Let’s go get that Asari,” she said confidence returning to her voice.

Justin exited the Med Bay, smiling back at the door to his sister’s quarters. It was go time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of the views and kudo's on the story! It makes my heart happy to see that you guys are enjoying this! I'm going to try to keep a more consistent posting schedule, but depending on how work goes, all bets are off. Thank you again!


	11. Chapter 11

The elevator door opened up and Heather made a beeline to her locker to start putting on her armor. The black undersuit had a slight metallic sheen to it which stood out in the cargo bay, accentuating just how tightly that it clung to her.

She grabbed her deep purple armor and started to put it on. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Garrus and Kaidan waiting over by the Mako. Garrus was working on the software upgrade that he had installed and Kaidan was waiting over by the hatch of the Mako. She could feel Kaidan's eyes on her yet again. She picked up her pace of putting on her armor to obscure herself from his view the best that she could as she thought to herself, "If he keeps this shit up, I'm going to have to put him in his place."

She quickly reached up and fastened her hair into a bun on the top of her head and then reached into her locker to grab her beloved Viper. She quickly attached it to the mount on her shoulder and headed over to the Mako to wait for her brother to arrive. She drifted over towards Garrus because she hadn't had a chance to talk to him today.

Garrus nodded at her in acknowledgement, his mandibles flaring in a Turian smile. Just as Heather opened her mouth to speak to see how the software install was going, Kaidan rushed over to her and interjected, "I thought you were a biotic?"

Heather furrowed her brow as she stared at the human male in front of her, confused as to what was going on. She peered over to Garrus who shrugged his shoulders as well. "I...am?" Heather answered tentatively. "I'm an Adept."

"But you don't have a pistol. Where is it?" Kaidan asked forcefully. 

"Uh..." Heather said, still confused as to why this was any sort of an issue. "I prefer to work long range, that's why I have my rifle. If i can't pick 'em off at a distance, then i have my biotics as backup. I'm a wicked shot at 100 yards."

Garrus nodded appreciatively at her last statement as she continued on. "My amp is a modified Asari one, it's stronger than what most humans have, so I don't have to worry about it wearing me out if I have to use it more than I anticipate."

Kaidan was not wanting to let this topic go. "But it's against Alliance regulations for a biotic to use anything but a pistol or shotgun in combat! We have to be able to cast our biotics with both hands!"

Heather crossed her arms, sunk back on her right hip, and rolled her eyes. "Listen here, Dudley Do Right, I'm not Alliance. I was trained by the Asari and found that I can do everything one handed. I have by way of doing things, and just because it doesn't fit your precious Alliance mold doesn't mean it's wrong." Heather was starting to struggle not to lose her temper. 

"I...uh...I just," Kaidan stammered. Heather shook her head at him. She almost felt bad that Kaidan couldn't open his mind to this. But then, she realized that this may be a chance to get him off her back finally. 

"Kaidan, look I'm sorry," Heather stated, her voice as saccharin as she could possibly get, and took a step closer to him. "I won't do things the same way as you or my brother do and I know this may be difficult for you at times. But just remember," she continued, taking a step even closer to him, putting her head by his ear as she whispered, "I won't hesitate to shoot you in the ass if you keep this shit up."

Kaidan swallowed hard and quickly shook his head. "Yes, ma'am," he managed to stammer out. "I should go see if the Commander needs any assistance." Quickly, Kaidan took off towards the elevator. 

Heather could hear the Turian behind her chuckling. She whipped around, a few small pieces of hair falling from her bun as she turned. "What?" she said, smoothing the fallen pieces away from her face. 

Garrus gestured for her to step towards him. "You should really remember that Turians have better hearing than humans. I heard what you said to him," he said, his voice not much above a whisper. 

Heather's face lost all color as she looked up at the Turian. "Please don't tell my brother," she pleaded with him. 

Garrus chuckled a bit. "As much as it goes against my C-Sec ways, he deserves it. Everyone on this ship has noticed that he can't stop staring at your ass."

Garrus leaned forward to take a look at her rear. "Although, I can see why he enjoys starting so much," he said, his voice low, subvocals reverberating. 

Heather started to laugh, reaching out and smacking her armored arm against her armored chest, the metals clanging against each other. "Well, I'm glad that everyone seems to appreciate the view, but I already know that Alenko went running to my brother. I'll deal with that when it comes up." 

"If my brother wants that, he can have it," Heather thought to herself as she stepped closer to Garrus to check on the cannon upgrade. She hoped to herself that what he had said wasn't just a joke, but real. 

Not more than five minutes later the elevator doors opened which revealed Justin, clad in his N7 armor, and Kaidan. As they started to walk towards the Mako, Justin looked slightly irritated, his brows furrowed together as Kaidan had a self-satisfied look on his face that both Heather and Garrus wanted to smack off. 

Justin pulled up a map on his Omni-tool, projecting it to the others. "Before we load up, here is the mission plan," Justin started. 

"Joker will drop us in the Mako, here. This was the best landing area that Navigator Pressly found," indicating a spot on the map a decent distance from the target zone. "Scans are being obstructed by some unknown force, possibly geth, so there may be some opposition. Vakarian, I'm assigning you to the cannon, Heather, you are on the gun. Alenko, you will act as navigator and work to unjam the scanners if possible. Vakarian, Heather, your orders are to shoot anything that moves." Both Heather and Garrus nodded their heads vigorously, with Heather shooting a wink to Garrus that she hoped Justin didn't see. 

"At some point, we expect we will not be able to continue in the Mako and will set out on foot. When we reach that spot, Heather will break off and scout forward to help find the best path and warn us of any incoming enemies. Vakarian will cover our six as I take point and push forward. Alenko will provide tech support with me. I do expect heavy opposition near the dig site, although I don't know exactly what we ill face. However, this team is well rounded in biotics and tech as well as weapons, so we should have no issues. I expect each of you to listen to not only myself, but to each other. Am I clear?" he questioned.

Heather and Garrus nodded quickly and turned to head towards the Mako. Heather felt a hand on her shoulder and saw it was Garrus. She gave him a warm smile, as she saw blue rise up in the corner of her eye. 

“Actually, Commander, I have a few concerns,” Kaidan said, his arm raised. 

Heather and Garrus turned around as Justin leaned back against the Mako, his Revenant clinging against the side. “Spill it Alenko,” Justin said, his commander voice making an appearance. 

“With all do respect, I do not agree with your assignments,” the dark haired male said, clasping his hands behind his back, standing up a bit straighter. 

Justin’s eyes turned dark. “And what exactly do you not agree with?” Justin spat at him. 

Kaidan started to stutter. “I..uh..don’t believe that anyone not trained in Alliance Regulations should either run recon or cover the rear. Especially not a mercenary or a Turian.” There was a touch of venom his voice, but Justin couldn’t decide if it was more directed at Garrus or his sister. 

It took every ounce of Heather’s strength not to lash out at the statement made. She wasn’t proud of what she was, but she was damn good at it. Heather looked to Garrus to help her gain some strength, but saw his mandibles sucked into his face. He clearly didn’t like what he heard either. 

“That’s enough!” Justin’s voice bellowed, echoing through the cargo bay. Kaidan’s eyes grew wide and Heather took a step closer to Garrus. “This is not an Alliance operation. This is a Spectre operation and if you have an issue with the way I run my operations, I can sure as hell replace you, not only on the ops, but on the ship as well.”

“I’m sorry, Commander. It won’t happen again sir,” Kaidan said, hanging his head down. 

“Damn straight it won’t,” Justin spat, pulling him self away from the Mako and taking a step closer to Kaidan. “Since you want to question my judgement, let me explain to you why I chose these roles. Vakarian is one of the top ranked snipers in the Turian Military and can seamlessly transition between long range and close combat. Heather worked as the Shadow Broker’s main recon scout as well as primary enforcer. She was so efficient at what she did they removed 4 others from the same role. And you, you had some of the finest tech skills that I’ve seen in quite some time. Everyone’s skills balanced to the mission perfectly. Now, prove to me that you are worth keeping around.” The fire in Justin’s voice was almost tangible. Heather couldn’t help but think that just got more upset because of the crush she knew he had on Kaidan and was disappointed in him.

Justin walked over to the Mako and popped the hatch, standing off to the side to allow his ground team to step into the Mako. Heather and Garrus piled into the rear seats to handle the weapons of the Mako. 

Sheepishly, Kaidan entered the Mako and climbed into the passenger seat with Justin following close behind. Garrus leaned over and quickly secured the hatch. 

“Joker, bring us into the drop site,” Justin said, starting the mako and positioning the Mako at the ramp of the cargo bay. 

“Aye aye Commander. Arrival at the drop point in 5. Boards are green. Commander, you are clear for your drop.” Joker echoed over the comms.   
Justin lurched the Mako forward out the opened cargo bay. Justin easily maneuvered the Mako to the ground, activating the thrusters and touching the Mako down gently. 

“Joker, drop back to orbit. We will radio you when we are ready for extraction,” Justin said, pushing forward. 

“Roger that, Commander. Joker out,” Joker said over the comms.

“10 Creds says I get mor with the gun than you get with the cannon,” Heather teased, glancing over to Garrus. 

“Might as well give me the creds now,” Garrus said, returning her glance. “I’ve got a wider effective area and more power to take them out.”

Heather leaned on her armrest closer to Garrus. “I’ve got speed. No reloads means I can take them out faster.”

Garrus followed suit and also leaned in closer to Heather. “That is, until you over heat the gun,” Garrus teased. 

“Well, I…” Heather started. Suddenly the Mako lurched to the side. Heather couldn’t keep her balance and slammed her face into Garrus’s armored arm. “Goddamn it Justin! Can you not drive this thing?” Heather shouted at Justin, her hand shooting up to her face. She could feel a small trickle of blood flow from just her eye. 

“It’s not my fault. It’s like it’s possessed or something,” Justin said, doing his best to keep the Mako as straight as possible. “Ugh, why are there 6 pedals if there are only 4 directions?”

“Maybe you should let Dudley Do Right drive,” Heather said as a small bump launched them up on one side. 

“As hurtful as your lack in faith in me is,” Justin started, “I don’t think it’s my fault this is happening.”

“Says the guy who wrecked every vehicle he drove before he turned 18,” Heather said, reaching up to gently wipe the blood that continued to run down her face. Garrus leaned over with a small application of Medi-Gel, applying it gently to the gash on her face. 

“This thing is undriveable. I don’t know why we have one of these things if its so dangero….” Justin’s voice began to trail off. “Geth dropship incoming!”

Heather and Garrus booted up the weapons in preparation for what was going to be dropped from the ship. Two large mechanical structures fell out of the ship and stood up. 

“That’s it?” Heather said, looking at Garrus, a puzzled look on her face. Suddenly near the tops of these two large metal things, two large blue lights began to glow, one on each one. They projected the blue lights at the Mako, but Justin couldn’t move quick enough, allowing them to come into contact with the Mako. 

“Ah!” Justin cried out. It electrocuted the whole Mako, the energy coursing through everyone. 

“Commander, to your left!” Kaidan called out, indicating a raised spot in the side of the terrain. 

Justin managed to steer the Mako over, obscuring it from view of these mechanical objects. “I’ve never seen Geth quite like that before,” Justin quipped. 

“Well we all know that just normal foot soldiers would much too easy,” Heather said, sorting through the GUI interface in front of her. “Damn it, I can’t see over the top of that rock. Justin pull back out and me and Garrus can start attacking it.” Heather continued. 

“You’ll kill us all!” Kaidan cried out. 

“So do you expect us to just sit here and die?” Garrus called out, using the interface to drop the missile into the cannon to ready it. 

“Heather’s right. It’s the best plan,” Justin said, checking the interface that showed behind him. “On the count of 3. 3………2………..1………now!”

Justin reversed the Mako from behind the cover. Both Heather and Garrus took their chance and lined up their shots to start taking what ever those things were down.

Slowly, between moving in and out of cover they were able to whittle each of the metal things down to be able to move on. 

As they worked their way forward, Kaidan announced, “There must be something big up ahead. Comms and radar are both jammed.”

Justin furrowed his brow. “Everyone be on the look out for whatever…uh…” Justin’s voice trailed off as he saw two extremely large turrets facing them. 

“Uh…” Heather said, her voice also trailing off for a second. “I don’t think the front door is going to work for this.”

Kaidan was scanning the area to the best of his efforts. “There!” he shouted pointing to his right, “This should let us take a different route in!” Justin quickly turned the Mako to a hard right and punched the gas, two missiles from the turret just narrowly missing the back of the Mako. 

“No, only the front entrance will be guarded,” Garrus quietly snarked. “No chance anyone will try a back door.”

Heather suppressed a chuckle as she elbowed Garrus. She flashed him a smile as she said. “What’s the fun in that?”

A Geth turret, one much smaller than the ones they had seen before, was the only obstacle between them and making their way into the base. 

“Seriously?” Heather asked as she aimed the gun at the turret, firing in bursts. “Where’s the challenge?”

The Geth turret exploded between rounds of gun fire. A missile out of the cannon connected and exploded it. Heather quickly turned her head towards the Turian next to her, who had a smirk on his face. “Kill count, 1 to 0,” he said, his voice low. 

“Game’s not over till the fat lady sings,” Heather replied, turning back to her interface, looking for anything that moved. 

Garrus cocked his head to the side, not understanding what she meant. He brushed it off as one of those human idioms he heard about. 

“Up ahead,” Kaidan said, “There’s nothing keeping us from moving into the compound. My scans don’t show what may be inside.”

“Well between Heckle and Jeckle here, we should be able to clear the place out.” Justin said, referring to Heather and Garrus as he maneuvered the Mako in. 

Before long, the base was cleared out and they pushed forward towards the Prothean dig site. They encountered more of the metal things that Heather determined were called Armatures from the files she downloaded at one of the terminals. 

After a bit longer, they reached a point where they would have to continue on foot. Justin quickly radioed up to Joker to give him the coordinates to pick up the Mako as they continued on. 

Heather and Garrus climbed out of the Mako first, stepping off to the side to remove their rifles from their mounts as Justin and Kaidan made their way out as well. 

Heather quickly used her gloves to wipe of the lens of her scope as she activated it. She pulled a sling out of one of the compartments of her leg armor and attached it to the rifle. “Well, I’ll meet up with you guys when I can,” she said, whipping around to face Garrus. “And just remember, Vakarian, I’m winning,” She briefly stuck out her tongue as she sauntered off. 

Justin couldn’t help but notice that even though there had been an altercation between Kaidan and his sister, Kaidan’s eyes were still trained on her backside as she walked away. It did frustrate him some, because he knew she wasn’t into him in the slightest, and because he felt himself developing feelings for his lieutenant. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw something he didn’t expect. Garrus was staring after his sister too, with the same look on his face that Kaidan had. He tried to shake it off as he directed Kaidan forward and Garrus dropped to the rear. 

Heather pushed forward up a steep hill to the east of the main path. She could see a large valley up ahead that looked entirely too much like a kill zone. 

“Justin, Alenko, watch yourselves. I’ve got a large valley about 200 yards ahead. I count six sniper nests and a bunch of foot patrols too.” Heather said over the comms. 

Justin looked ahead and could see what she was referring to. There wasn’t a lot of cover for them until they approached the valley itself. It could easily be a death trap. “Heather,” Justin said in a commanding tone, “Take out as many of the snipers as you can as we push up to the valley.” He turned to Kaidan who was standing next to him. “Kaidan, I need you to create a barrier as we move up.”

“I’ll give it my best,” Kaidan said, lifting his arms up, a blue glow emanating from his hands as a blue sphere enveloped Justin and himself as they moved forward. 

Singular shots rang out through the area as Heather knocked down the Geth snipers that she could see. She quickly started to scan the ridge to see a few more Geth approaching in the distance. Suddenly, she heard a rustling coming from somewhere near her, a rumble that clearly sounded like a Geth reverberating through her ears. 

“Oh, fuck,” she said, rolling over onto her back, coming face to face with a Geth trooper, his rifle aimed down at her. “No!” Heather screamed out, panicking and covering her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhangers are my favorite! And what kind of Mass Effect fan fic would be if we didn't make fun of how the Mako drives?


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m excited to see how this is progressing!! I’ve got a good amount of fluff planned for the next chapter!

Heather's eyes remained covered as a single shot rang out, the bullet creating a metallic clang when it impacted its target. Heather heard the Geth standing above her crumple to the ground in a heap. 

She uncovered her eyes and scrambled up into a sitting position on the ground, her heart pounding as she struggled to catch her breath. She panted as she looked around the area. 

Heather saw Garrus headed to her in a half jog. Relieved that it was him heading her way, she leaned over slightly, playing her elbow on her leg and resting her head on her hand. 

She heard the footsteps stop near her, as Garrus's voice said, "Match is mine. Saving you counts as five kills."

Heather turned her head and glared up at him. "I'm not some damsel in distress who needs saving. I had everything under control," she replied. 

"Riiiight," he drawled snarkily as he stepped up closer to her. "Regardless, I don't think your brother would let me stay on the ship if I wouldn't have taken the shot."

Heather chuckled a bit. "You're probably right, but knowing Justin, the Geth would likely cease to exist after he finished his rampage."

Garrus offered his hand to her to help her up. She grabbed the three fingered hand willingly. However, Garrus underestimated his strength in relation to the smaller human's weight, and pulled Heather up to him with more force than he intended. That action sent her crashing into him, the metal in their chest pieces clanging together, ringing slightly. Instinctively, they both wrapped their arms around each other, Garrus using his grip on her to keep her from falling back to the ground. 

Heather shifted slightly, ensuring that her feet were firmly planted on the ground. However, neither one would be the first to move out of the other's arms. Heather looked up to see Garrus's icy blue eyes already staring down at her. She smiled softly as she continued to look up at him as well. 

"Heather, Vakarian, status report!" Justin's voice called out over the comms, some panic in his voice. 

They untangled from each other as Heather activated her comm, "We're good Justin, Garrus is up here with me."

"Copy that," Justin replied. "You two stick together for the remainder. Alenko and I are pushing forward. You two watch the perimeter to make sure that nothing ambushes us while we clear the remainder from the valley. Once that is done, we'll meet at the neck of the valley up ahead for the final approach to the dig site."

"Copy," Heather said over the comms, looking over at Garrus and nodding as they both dropped down to their knees to start scouting the perimeter. They could see a mixture of gunfire and biotics pouring through the valley below them. After ensuring that the threat was eliminated and there was nothing approaching, Heather and Garrus moved forward to meet up with Justin and Kaidan.

Kaidan and Justin were waiting for Heather and Garrus as they reached the meeting point. Justin crossed his arms when he heard Heather giggle as they got closer. Justin saw the glance that his sister shot over to the Turian next to her, which resulted in the Turian nudging her with his arm.

That's when it hit Justin. He could tell that something was growing between them, something building on respect and friendship. He couldn't tell if either had vocalized anything at this point. But seeing that, being her big brother, he couldn't help but hope this all turned out well for her, but of course he would have to tease her about it. 

Justin uncrossed his arms. "Well it's about time you love birds showed up," he said, trying to maintain some seriousness in his voice.

Heather's face turned pink as she dropped her head down. Garrus wasn't familiar with that particular human phrase so confusion became clear on his face. 

Kaidan had a clear look of shock on his face as he turned to look at Justin. It was clear to most that Kaidan had feelings for Heather, but failed to realize that she didn't return those feelings. Justin could only give him a small look that told him not to worry about it. 

"Signal is jammed pretty good, but Alenko here tried out some of the new tech we got and was able to get a better read on what we are facing before we hit the dig site," Justin said, trying to draw the attention away from his failed attempt at a joke. 

"And what exactly are we facing," Garrus asked, switching out his sniper rifle for his assault rifle. 

"Looks like a shit storm. The programs tracking the majority out there, which looks like normal Geth, but a few other things it can't describe. So, yeah, a shit storm," Kaidan explained. 

"Ah, my favorite kind of storm," Heather snarked. 

"Heather and I will take point on this and move up. Kaidan...I mean Alenko and Vakarian will cover the rear. And your eyes had better be on the enemies, not something else in front of you," Justin said, trying to add a little light to the situation before them. 

Heather moved her arms into a stretch, her biotics creating a subtle blue glow on her armor. She hadn't had a strictly biotic battle in quite some time and was excited to unleash them again.

She looked over at Justin, nodding at him as she called out, "Ready when you are!"

They started to move up and encountered a host of geth in the area, but then an additional drop ship appeared and dropped one of those armentures in front of them. 

Heather and Justin dove behind cover as Garrus dropped back and switched to his sniper rifle. Kaidan ran up and took a spot next to Justin, as that spot was large enough for two people, on the opposite side of the field as Heather. 

Heather quickly popped up and threw out a singularity field, capturing a few geth on the ground in the field. However, the armenture in front of them unleashed its attack, a ball of blue energy hurling directly at Heather. 

"Ah fuck!" Heather cried out as her shields dropped and she fell back to the ground behind her cover.

"You okay?" Garrus called out from the rear as he fired a shot, taking out one of the geth hanging on the side of the structure. 

Heather peeked back over her cover as she called out, "Yeah," She allowed her shields to come back up, and stood up and threw a pull field which connected with the other Geth that wasn't too far from the one that Garrus had just sniped. She swung her arm, slamming the Geth into the side of the armenture, causing the smaller one to explode.

Kaidan and Justin focused their attack on the armenture, whittling it down the best that they could with small bursts of gunfire, Justin from his Revenant and Kaidan from his standard issue Predator pistol. 

Heather did what she could to continue pulling the Geth into the much larger armenture, while keeping an eye on the singularity field she had launched to keep others in a group for Garrus to continue picking off. She was breathing a bit heavier than normal. She tried to convince herself that it was because it was a bit of a heavier atmosphere than what she was used to, but it wasn't the case. She used her biotics a lot, but never in a battle where she didn't have a firearm as a back up. Sure she had her Viper, but she was much too close for a sniper rifle to do any semblance of good. 

Finally, the armenture fell, and heather collapsed against the cover in front of her, her hair wet with sweat. Kaidan and Justin holstered their weapons as they saw Garrus jog up and kneel down by Heather. They saw her nod at what Garrus had said, grabbing her hand and pulling her up to her feet. 

Kaidan's self-righteousness came back when he thought about the battle. How if Heather had just listened to him and brought a pistol with her she wouldn't be in this situation. He watched Garrus tap her on the shoulder gently which caused her to break into a large smile. That's when Kaidan decided he needed to say something. 

"Those alliance regulations about what weapons a biotic should use would have come in really handy right about now," he said, which caused everyone to spin around and look at him. 

"Fuck off Alenko," Heather said, spinning back around, her hands curled into fists as she started to walk towards the gangway that led towards the dig site. Garrus turned and started walking with her, saying something to her that no one else could hear. 

"You know I'm right!" Kaidan called out which resulted in Heather to stop dead in her tracks, her fists lightly glowing blue as the Turian beside her turned his head and snarled, "If she wanted your opinion, she would have asked for it. Screw off."

Kaidan stopped moving forward, which caused Justin to head over to him. Justin placed a hand on Kaidan's shoulder. "Kaidan, buddy, you gotta stop. I know you mean well, but she's not going to change. She's stubborn and takes offense when others dictate what she does. She's always been like that," Justin explained. 

Kaidan nodded his head and said, "I know Commander, I'll work on it."

Justin raised his hand and gently tapped Kaidan's cheek. "Lighten up, Lieutenant." Justin's thumb gently brushed over Kaidan's cheekbone before he pulled his hand away. "Besides, if we don't catch up with them, they will get to have all the fun!" Justin chuckled as he took off jogging towards Heather and Garrus. 

Kaidan hesitated for a moment as he raised his hand up to his face where Justin's hand had just been as he followed Justin up the gangway. 

The group made quick work of the few Geth that had been inside. Justin thought to himself that they didn't figure anyone would breach their outer defenses.

They took two elevators down deeper into the mine, finally bottoming out. They exited the elevator, guns drawn as they walked closer to the blue area that was glowing in front of them. That's when they found what they had been looking for. 

"Stop! Don't come any closer," the Asari suspended in the blue field called out, drawing the group's attention to her. 

"Liara T'Soni?" Justin asked, looking around the exterior of the field, trying to find something that would release her. 

Liara quickly confirmed her identity and explained how she had gotten caught in the security field that had been left by the Protheans and that she had no idea what her mother was up to, as they hadn’t spoken in years.

Heather couldn’t help but think the Asari in front of them was entirely too trusting. She spent years working with them during her time in Eclipse, as well as during her time as the Shadow Broker’s agent, and most didn’t trust humans as far as they could throw them. “She must be extremely young,” Heather thought to herself.

“The control pad that locked me in place is directly behind me. There must be a way to get to the other side to access the panel,” Liara said. “But be careful, there are geth hidden away here.”

“Hang tight, we’ll get you out of there,” Justin replied as he heard multiple Geth units activating behind them. They turned around to begin clearing the Geth that appeared behind them. 

Within minutes the four of them had taken out what had been hiding in the area. “Everybody split up and see what we can do to make it to the other side,” Justin commanded.

Garrus dropped back towards the rear of the canyon where a small makeshift camp had been set up. Kaidan and Justin worked through the center of the room, and Heather made her way up to the front where Liara was. 

It felt like hours that they spent searching the cavern. There was something towards the bottom of the stasis chamber chambered that looked like a potential way through. Heather found a small path that she could see through, which indicated to her that there was a path that had been here before, now covered by rock. She stood off to the side, staring, hoping the tech side of her brain would be of some use. 

Kaidan let out a big sigh as he said, “I’m still not finding anything, Commander. I’m not sure if there is a way through.” 

“Sure there is,” Justin replied, trying to keep some optimism in his voice, “We just haven’t found it yet.”

Kaidan leaned back against a small console he had looked at previously. He hadn’t been able to find a source of power on it. He figured it would be safe to lean against. He was wrong. The console powered up, a large roar coming from it as it activated a large mining laser that had been partially obscured by the wall behind the console.

The laser shot a beam not far from where Heather was standing. “Heather!” Justin called out, but there was no time for a proper warning. The impact of the laser on the rocks under the chamber exploded and sent Heather flying off to the side, landing hard a few feet away. 

She laid there, as her heart rate started to slow down and dust began to fall around her. Suddenly, a sharp pain rushed through her left side. She clenched her teeth as she forced herself to sit up. She looked down and saw blood on the ground, a steady stream pouring from her side, and a jagged piece of metal sticking straight up where she had just been laying. 

She quickly activated her Omni-tool and applied medi-gel to the wound on her side. She closed her eyes as the pain began to subside. She reached down and confirmed that there was no more blood flowing. When she opened her eyes, Justin and Garrus were kneeling at her side, concerned looks on both of their faces.

“I’m okay,” Heather said. “Bleeding has stopped for now, but I’ll have the doc check it out back on the ship.”

Justin stood up as he watched Garrus gently help her to her feet. Justin couldn’t help but notice that Garrus had his eyes locked on Kaidan, a predatory glare. It looked like he blamed Kaidan for what had happened. 

Heather stood up on her feet and stretched a bit, the injury causing her some more pain. She tried to mask what she was feeling as she pointed and said, “Hey! It looks like we can get through now. The path is clear.”

They started to walk under the stasis chamber to where Liara was trapped. Garrus stuck to Heather’s side, allowing her to lean on him as they crossed through to the elevator that was waiting on the other side. As the elevator ascended, Garrus gently placed his arm around her, doing his best to keep from grabbing her waist too tightly. Heather clung to his side the best that she could, the pain starting to become intense. 

Justin watched as Kaidan eyed Heather and Garrus. He could see a combination of jealousy and sadness in the biotic’s eyes. He stepped up closer to Kaidan and lightly tapped him on the shoulder to let him know that everything was okay. Kaidan replied with an unsure smile. 

The elevator came to a stop and Justin and Kaidan moved out to go release Liara from the stasis chamber while Heather and Garrus remained back on the elevator. 

“How did you make it through?” Liara asked as the invisible restraints on her vanished and she fell to her knees as Justin deactivated the chamber. 

Justin looked over at Kaidan. Both were confused as to how she didn’t see or hear what happened. 

Justin looked back towards Liara as he stepped up to her, offering her his hand to pull her up to her feet. Her eyes were as big as saucers as she looked up at Justin who was taller than her. She smiled up at him, the admiration in her gaze clear. 

Justin smiled awkwardly in return as the entire chamber started to quake. “Oh no!” Liara cried out, “These ruins are coming down. We need to get out of here. This elevator should take us to an exit opposite of the way you came in!”

Justin opened his com line to the Normandy as he called out, “Joker! Get ready for evac. This place is coming down. I’m sending you the coordinates.” Justin looked towards the group as they piled towards the center of the elevator, with Justin activating it. “Everyone be on the lookout. We don’t know if they have a surprise waiting for us.”  
“There may be a Krogan with them. One tried to get me before I got stuck in there” Liara saidk, moving closer to the control panel. With that statement, Garrus tightened his hold on Heather, causing her to wince slightly. 

The elevator came to a stop as they reached their destination near the exit. The doors on the far side of the room slid open which revealed the Krogan that Liara had been referring to earlier. 

“That was easier than I thought! Spare the Asari if you can.,” the Krogan in front of them said, motioning for his Geth troops to spread out. 

“These ruins are coming down!” Justin shouted, parroting what Liara had said earlier. “If you want to live we need to get out of here.”

The Krogan just chuckled. “Nah, this just makes it more fun!” he yelled as he whipped his shotgun from behind his back. 

“Attack!” Justin commanded, taking his assault rifle from his back and jumping off to the side. Liara placed a biotic barrier around herself near the center console. 

Garrus kept Heather near him as she created a barrier around them. Garrus pulled his assault rifle off of its mount as they picked off as many as they could. Heather would drop the barrier long enough for Garrus to fire and pulling it back up when they received gunfire.

Kaidan and Justin worked back to back in the small cover that they found. The circular area made it difficult to ensure everything was being handled. 

There were several beams in the center of the room that the Geth and the Krogan used to their advantage. Almost systematically, they took down everything in the room, with the Krogan being the last to fall. 

Heather and Liara dropped their barriers as the group started to head towards the exit. Heather pulled herself away from Garrus for a moment as she leaned over the Krogan to take the pistol that he had with him. 

Just as Heather’s hand connected with the pistol, the Krogan’s eyes shot open. “Argh!” he cried as he used his brute force to launch Heather away from him, throwing her into the pillar that was near them. 

Heather screamed out in pain as the wound on her side ripped open and blood began to flow from it.   
Garrus spun around trying to unholster the rifle, as several shots rang out. He turned and saw Kaidan with his pistol drawn, making it clear he was the one who had fired them. The Krogan crumpled into a heap as more orange blood pooled around him. 

Garrus rushed over to Heather, with Justin just a couple of steps behind him. Garrus pulled her into his arms, one arm wrapped around her chest and the other around her legs. He and Justin both turned around to start running out the door. 

“Joker! Tell Chakwas to prep the med bay, we have one wounded!” Justin yelled over the comms. 

Kaidan and Liara pulled up the rear as they all exited the dig site. They could hear the walls crumbling in behind them as they ran with all of their might. 

“Keep at it!” Justin called out. “We’re almost there! I can see the exit!”

They all made it, just narrowly as the entrance collapsed behind them, quaking the ground at their feet. 

The Normandy dropped into view as Joker lowered it closer to the ground, the cargo hatch opening with the majority of the crew standing nearby. 

Justin placed his hand on Garrus’s back as he pushed the Turian holding his sister forward, ushering the remainder of the ground team on to the Normandy. 

“Clear a path!” Garrus yelled as he ran through the cargo bay with Heather still in his arms, her red blood leaving small droplets in their path. 

Garrus climbed into the elevator where Dr. Chakwas was waiting with a small stretcher. He carefully laid her down as Dr Chakwas moved in closer. 

All Garrus could do was stand there as the doctor opened the latches on her chest piece and lifted it away, her blood starting to pull underneath her. She quickly grabbed the gauze that was on the stretcher and placed it over her wound, applying as much pressure as she could as the elevator moved slowly up to the next deck. 

“What happened?” Dr. Chakwas questioned as she injected Heather with a pain killer. 

“Explosion,” Heather said through gritted teeth. “It tossed me and I landed on some metal which impaled me. We got it closed up but…” Heather’s voice trailed off as her eyes closed.  
“What’s going on?” Garrus asked, panic evident in his voice. 

“She’s passed out from blood loss,” Dr. Chackwas said as the elevator doors opened. She pushed the stretcher out and around the corner to the med bay as quickly as she could. 

Two assistants were waiting at the door and took the stretcher from Dr. Chakwas, pulling Heather into the med bay. 

The doctor quickly spun around to stop the following Turian in his tracks. “I’ll let you know when you can see her,” she said. “In the meantime, head to the mission debrief and get cleaned up.”

The doctor closed the door behind her and blacked out the windows so no one could see into the med bay. 

Garrus stood there, completely in shock. His senses finally started to come back as he listened to what the doctor said. He looked down and saw Heather’s blood staining the blue and black armor he was wearing. He turned and headed towards the showers to get that off of him, hoping that nothing would happen to her.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff time!!

Garrus made his way to the showers when Justin sent the crew a message.

_ JShep: Meeting in the Comm Room - 10 Minutes _

Garrus closed his comm and increased his pace to the showers. He stripped the armor off and tossed it in the corner, creating a metallic thud. He made a note to come back up here after the meeting to collect his armor to get it ready for the next mission. 

He stood under the hot water, letting the dirt and grime wash off of his plates. His mind struggled to stay focused. He knew that he needed to hurry to the debrief, but he couldn’t get his hide moving. 

He kept replaying the events on Therum. The fear he felt when he saw the Geth standing over Heather, or when she lay injured on the ground.

He shook his head. She was his friend, by far the one he had become closest to on the ship. It amazed him that they became so close so quickly, because he was normally not the most trusting person out there. But he couldn’t help but think back to the first time that they met. 

When she had first caught his attention, he just noticed her watching others. In the large room with so many other people, they didn’t notice the one woman tucked away just observing. But he did. 

There was something about her that stuck out, and he wasn’t able to put his finger on it. He was familiar with humans, from working in C-Sec, but she didn’t seem like the typical human, and eventually finding out that she was the Kriegerin explained a lot to him. He didn’t like mercenaries normally, but everything he had heard about the Kriegerin left him in awe. He shouldn’t have felt that way and to have the person behind it quickly become one of his closest friends blew him away. 

But then he remembered her in his arms, her red blood running from her, his chest tightened as he hung his head down. 

His Omni-Tool chirped with another message

_ JShep: Vakarian. Comm Room. Now _

He didn’t realize how much time had passed. He shut the water off and quickly threw on his casual clothes and started towards the comm room. 

Justin was becoming irritated. He saw there waiting for the final crew member so they could go over the mission and he wanted to get it over with so he could go check on his sister.  What surprised him, was that of every crew member called to the debrief, it was Garrus who was late. He didn’t expect that the Turian would show any kind of tardiness because that wasn’t normal of his species.

The doors slid open and Garrus came through the doorway and damn near ran to his seat. He noticed that he wasn’t wearing his armor, which was the first time he had seen him in anything but armor. 

Garrus looked over at Justin and opened his mouth to speak, but Justin put his hand up to stop him. “We’ll talk after this,” Justin told Garrus, to which Garrus nodded.  Justin started his tactical debrief, going over what had gone right and what had gone wrong. Kaidan once again tried to admonish Heather and her choice of weapons, but Justin wouldn’t let him continue. Garrus could only glare at him, keeping his thoughts to himself.

They moved into their discussion as to why Liara was wanted by Saren and his Geth. Garrus unintentionally zoned out on the conversation as he stared down at his Omni-Tool implant, waiting for the message from Dr. Chakwas to hear how Heather was doing. 

His attention was brought back to the situation in front of him when he saw Liara standing in front of Justin, saying something that he still wasn’t listening to. He didn’t make out what was said until he heard Liara exclaim “Embrace Eternity!” He had never seen this before and it got his attention. 

He watched Liara and Justin come back to reality. Liara started rambling about Protheans and not understanding what she saw her knees buckled and she fell into Justin who quickly caught her. 

“You should see the doctor and get checked out,” Justin said. “The rest of you, dismissed.”

Garrus started to walk to the door when Justin gave him a signal to wait. “Alenko,” Justin called out as Kaidan approached him. “Please help Ms. T’Soni down to the med bay. I need to have a word with Vakarian.”

Kaidan nodded and took Liara from his grip and held onto her gently and led her out the door to the med bay which resulted in a disappointed look growing over her face. 

As the door closed behind them, Justin spun on his heels to face the Turian behind him. 

“Commander, I apologize for being late,” Garrus started off, “I let the time get away from me. It won’t happen again.”

“Garrus, calm down. I’m not mad at you. Sure I was a bit peeved but we’ve all been through a lot of stress today. I get it,” Justin explained.

Garrus nodded but was interrupted by his Omni-Tool beeping on his wrist. He looked at the flashing light briefly, but then looked back to Justin. 

Justin raised an eyebrow at Garrus. It wasn’t like him to be so unfocused, but as his Omni-Tool chirped with a notification, he knew why the Turian was so distracted. 

Justin crossed his arms and sunk back on his hip. “What’s going on between you and my sister?” Justin asked bluntly. 

Garrus started to stutter. “I...uh...umm...ahem,” he said, clearing his throat. “There’s nothing between us, we are just friends.”

“Bullshit,” Justin said. “I saw the way you guys were acting and looking at each other. Hell even Kaidan picked up on it . You weren’t being very subtle.” 

“Subtle about what?” Garrus asked him. He knew exactly what Justin was referring to, but he didn’t want to admit it to him. 

“The flirting. It was obvious even to the Geth as to what was going on between you guys,” Justin continued. 

Garrus didn’t know what to say. He just sat there in silence 

“Garrus, do you like my sister?” Justin asked, keeping the direct approach. 

Garrus nodded his head. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve got a thing for humans, but I like her. Everything about her,” Garrus said almost sheepishly. 

“Well I’m glad to hear that, because I know she likes you too,” Justin said almost matter-of-factly as he sat back down on one of the chairs. “She hasn’t said anything directly to me, but I know her well enough to see it.” He looked up at Garrus. “If you guys want this, go for it. She could definitely do worse than Turian with a wicked shot. But, if you hurt my sister, I will kill you. I’m a spectre, remember?”

Justin released a sigh of relief. He wasn’t even remotely phased by Justin threatening bodily harm to him. He finally was able to admit to that he was falling for her, after trying to convince himself that he wasn’t. 

“I know that message was from the doctor. Get down there and go check on her.” Justin said, smacking him on the shoulder. 

Garrus’s mandibles flared in a smile as he rushed out the door. Justin could only smile. He was happy for both of them. As her brother, he was supposed to dislike anyone who liked Heather, but when he saw the way that they looked at each other, he knew that they were right for each other. 

Garrus damn near sprinted down the stairs of the Normandy to head to the mjed bay. He stopped in his tracks when he reached the bottom of the stairs as he eyed the elevator. 

While he didn’t like the way that it had been addressed, he didn’t think Kaidan was entirely wrong about her carrying a pistol or something similar out on a mission. He was there with her when they loaded their lockers, and he didn’t think that she brought anything with her that wasn’t a sniper rifle. He knew she had a small concealable pistol, but that was only good when she wasn’t in her armor. He really didn’t want to offend her, but he wanted her to be safe too. 

He thought back and remembered that he had brought one of his service pistols from C-Sec with him. He prefered a rifle to a pistol any day, and knew that the Phaeston that he had brought with him would serve him well. His pistol was a Paladin, one of the hardest hitting pistols out there. Something that would be a great backup for her should she need it. 

He activated the elevator and headed down to the cargo bay to head to his locker. He quickly grabbed the silver case and headed back up to the med bay. 

As he approached the med bay, the door slid open and he saw Justin walk out of the med bay who gave him a smile as he walked up. He could see Heather sitting on one of the beds there, with Dr. Chakwas at her side. 

As he came closer, he noticed that Heather had her shirt pulled up to expose the gash that she had received. Dr. Chakwas’s handiwork sealed the wound up well, with barely any indication that she had been cut open. 

Garrus’s eyes lingered on the skin and her waist. He couldn’t help but notice how different she was than what he had seen before. More tattoos decorated the sides of her rib cage, much like the ones that were already on her arms, but that wasn’t what kept his attention. She didn’t have the same small waist and flared rounded hips that most human women and asari had, and nothing close to the narrow waist of a female Turian. Save for a small indentation under her rib cage, she didn’t have a defined waist, but the muscles were still evident under her skin. He had just never noticed this before now. 

He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, his eyes drawn to her bare skin that he so desperately wanted to touch. 

Heather looked up and saw him standing there. A wide smile grew over her face as she motioned for him to come closer to her. 

“Everything looks good for now, Heather. You’ll be on light duty until the incision fully heals. No ground missions, no sparring, nothing strenuous. Just relax or I will have you restrained in the med bay,” Dr. Chakwas said, checking her data pad. “If you need me, I’ll be in the mess hall finishing up the report.” She turned around and left, leaving Heather and Garrus alone in the med bay. 

Heather adjusted her shirt down as Garrus stepped up beside her. Before he realized what he was doing, he had set the silver case on the bed beside her and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. 

They sat there, arms around each other for quite some time before they finally pulled themselves away from each other. 

“I’m glad you are okay,” Garrus said. “I couldn’t stand seeing that happen to you.”   
  
“Well getting brutally injured was my plan so that a certain dashing Turian would have to carry me,” Heather said, her tone light.    


“Seriously though,” Garrus said, grabbing her hands with his. “Seeing that geth standing over you, and then finding you hurt almost gave me a heart attack.”

He reached over and grabbed the case he had set next to her. “I know how Alenko came off when he brought up the side arm thing,” he said as Heather’s expression turned dark. “But I just want you to be safe.”

He opened the case to show her the pistol inside. “It’s the first pistol I got at C-Sec. It’s an M77 Paladin. For its size, nothing packs a stronger punch. I…..I want you to have it.”   


Tears welled up in Heather’s eyes as she picked the gun up out of the case. She turned it over in her hands and saw the name “Vakarian” etching in blue matching his colony colors on the side, contrasting brilliantly to the light grey of the gun. She ran her fingers over it. “If there’s a time where I’m not at your six, at least you will have this as back up,” he said, 

Tears broke free from Heather’s eyes as she set the case down beside her and stepped up to her feet to wrap her arms around him again. 

A soft rumble emitted from Garrus as he held her against him. He pulled back from her slightly, just enough to reach down and hold her face as he leaned down to touch her forehead with his. She wrapped her arms up around his neck. 

Heather pulled back from him slightly, staring into the icy blue of his eyes, as she raised up on her toes and pressed his lips to his plated mouth. 

He had never been kissed before, unsure of what to think, the concept foreign to him. He had heard about it before and had seen humans and asari do it, but he had never experienced anything like it before. 

He closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax and submit to the softness of her lips. He broke the kiss and looked down at her with a smile and pulled her back into his chest. 

Kaidan had been working at his station across from the med bay keeping an eye on Heather as He watched that event unfold in front of him. 

He felt his face turn red as he watched the Turian and Heather break their kiss. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He quickly turned around and took off to Justin’s cabin to tell him what he saw. Maybe this would convince Justin to get rid of the Turian. 

Kaidan knew that Justin had went into his cabin after he had visited Heather in the med bay, so he knew that Justin was there. 

He quickly pounded on the door to get Justin’s attention. The doors slid open to reveal Justin standing there, a datapad in hand, with a confused look on his face. 

“Kaidan?” Justin asked him. “What’s going on? Is everything alright?” Panic started to grow in his voice. 

Kaidan pushed by Justin so that way what he was about to say wasn’t announced to the whole ship. “Commander, I saw something rather distressing in the med bay. That Turian, Vakarian, is trying to take advantage of your sister.”

Justin looked at Kadian curiously. “What do you mean?” he questioned. 

“They were….kissing.” Kaidan said, disgust in his voice. 

Justin’s facial expression changed from confusion to joy in a matter of seconds. “Ha! That dog! Didn’t take him long to make his move! I’m proud of him!” Justin exclaimed. 

“You mean you approve of this?” Kaidan spat.

“Of course! Didn’t you see the way they interacted with each other, how they looked at each other? They are good for each other,” Justin explained. “IF they make each other happy, that’s all that matters.”

“But…” Kaidan started to protest. 

Justin stepped up towards Kaidan. “Kaidan, you’ve got to let this go. Move on. There’s no use pining over what you can’t have,” he said.

He locked eyes with Kaidan and placed his hand on the side of Kaidan’s neck. “Once you move on, you’ll never know what you can find,” he continued, his voice low. 

Kaidan pulled himself away from Justin. “I...uh...need to go, Commander. I’m sorry,” Kaidan stuttered. 

Justin hung his head as Kaidan ran out the door. He had royally screwed things up and he wouldn't blame Kaidan if he wanted off the ship, but figured he’d give him some space for now. 

“Commander,” Joker’s voice rang out over the comms. “We’ve got a distress signal coming from another system in this cluster. Message isn’t clear but it’s coming from the Sparta System. Once we get closer, we can pinpoint which planet it’s coming from. The only thing we know is it’s showing Alliance encryption, so that means it’s some of ours down there.”

“Set a course for it,” Justin commanded. 

“Aye aye commander. ETA to the system, 1 hour.” Joke responded. 

He pulled up his comms and sent a message to Garrus and Wrex to prepare for the mission. 

The time passed quickly as Justin prepped as much as he could. They found the signal was coming from Edolus, an uninhabited planet similar to Therum. With the differences in the terrain, Pressly was able to find a great landing zone close to the location of the signal, which hopefully would make this a quick mission. 

He stopped back by the med bay to check on Heather who was fast asleep in her cabin, still feeling the effects of the medication. 

Justin headed down to the Mako where Garrus and Wrex were already waiting for him. He quickly briefed them on the mission and loaded up to prepare for the drop. 

Justin saw up front alone, so that Garrus and Wrex could man the guns in the back. By his account, this should be a quick mission and they should be back within the hour. He knew everyone’s nerves were shot after the past mission, so he just wanted this one to go well. 

Justin set his scanners to lock on to the distress signal to make their approach nice and easy. He saw he’d have to take the Mako over a small mountain, but that was easy compared to trying to ensure he didn’t drive them into lava/ 

As they cleared the crest of the mountain they saw a big clearing with a single Grizzly in the center. 

“They couldn’t handle this? There’s nothing here,” Wrex said as he scanned the area. 

“Something doesn’t seem right here,” Justin said. “It feels like a trap.”   


Garrus echoed his concerns . In everything he had seen in his time at C-Sec, the stillest moments were always the most dangerous. He used the optical zoom on the cannon to see what they were approaching. 

“Shepard, something’s wrong. There’s no movement or any signs of life at the vehicle. I’m not sure, but it looks like there may be a body on the ground,” Garrus said, loading a missile into the cannon. 

“I agree with the whelp here. Back on Tuchanka areas like this would be prime spots for…” Wrex’s voice trailed off. 

The ground began to quake and a bloodcurdling screech echoed through the Mako. Justin slammed on the brakes as a large creature rose from the ground. His eyes widened as he yelled, “Thresher maw!”

He slammed the Mako into reverse to move away from the thresher maw as Garrus launched the missile he had readied. The maw screamed and went back underground.” 

“Shit!” Justin cried out, smacking one of the screens on the Mako. “The distress beacon has a tracking jammer on it. When that maw goes underground we can’t track where it is!”

Wrex just chuckled. “You pyjacks scare? I’ll show you what Krogan’s call fun!”

The Thresher maw rose up and clipped the front end of the Mako, which launched it up in the area, flipping it over. The Mako landed on it’s top, just slightly on one side as the thresher maw went back underground. 

“Well this sure seems like a lot of fun. Glad I get to die in a tin can with you two,” Garrus snarked. 

“Shut it,” Justin said. He kept hitting the mass effect thrusters to try to flip it back over. He could get it to rock, but couldn’t get it to fully turn back over. 

The thresher maw popped back up in front of the Mako. “Quick, Garrus, the cannon!” Justin yelled. 

A big red triangle popped up on Garrus’s screen. “I can’t target when we are on the cannon!” Garrus replied. 

“We need to do something, he’s prepping to toss us an acid ball,” Wrex said. “Even a Krogan can’t survive an acid bath.”

“I’m trying Wrex!” Justin called out. He tried to move the thrusters in a different direction to continue rocking the Mako. It worked better than his other options as the Mako rocked and used it’s momentum to flip back up on its wheels. 

It was just in the nick of time as a ball of acid flew right where the Mako had been. 

“Cutting it a little close there, Shepard!” Garrus exclaimed as he launched another missile at it. 

“Don’t worry,” Justin said, maneuvering the Mako to the other side of the clearing as the maw popped up as they dumped more missiles and bullets into it. “Heather will kill me if you don’t come back in one piece.”

Wrex stopped firing his gun and turned towards Garrus as he said, “I knew I could smell her on you.”

“Wrex, this is not the time for this!” Garrus said launching another missile. 

With that missile the thresher maw fell dead to the ground. Wrex turned to Garrus and said, “Now seems like a perfect time.”

“Wrex stop!” Justin shouted as Garrus’s Omni-Tool dinged with a message.

_ JShep: I shouldn’t have said anything like that in front of Wrex. But be aware, Alenko saw you guys and came running to me about it. _

_ GVkrn: You aren’t mad? _

_ JShep: No Just...don’t do anything in front of me.  _

Garrus leaned back slightly as they approached the vehicle. It was clear that there were no survivors here. Justin headed up to the distress beacon and disabled it. He noticed a weird orange symbol etched into the jammer that had been blocking their scanners. 

Garrus kneeled down and looked at the bodies. “Thresher maw got them. They were boiled alive in their armor from the acid. Seems like the distress signal was a trap.”

“Shitty way to go,” Justin said. He opened the hatch of the Grizzly and pulled out a data pad. “Huh, these men are part of Admiral Kahoku’s squad. I overheard him talking to one of the council’s assistants at the tower. We’d better let him know what we found. 

They nodded and headed back to the Mako. Justin signaled for extraction and waited for the Normandy to pick them up. While they waited, Garrus decided to check in on Heather. 

_ GVrkn: How are you feeling? _

_ HShep: Fine, sore more than anything. How was the mission? _

_ GVrkn: Thresher maws, flipped Makos, you know, fun stuff. Oh and apparently Kaidan saw us and went running to Shepard _

_ HShep: That little weasel. He runs to my brother about everything. I’ll talk to Justin _

_ GVrkn: Everything’s handled. Shepard’s staying out of it. _

_ HShep: After that it sounds like you need some down time. Want to watch a vid when you get back? _

_ GVrkn: Sure. I’ll bring the snacks. Be there in 20.  _

Heather flipped off her omni tool and settled back into her bed. She was still really stiff from the injury so she hadn’t moved much after she changed into a tank top and comfy leggings. 

She had created quite the nest with a bunch of pillows she had borrowed from the med bay, making it downright cozy for her to say curled up in. 

Garrus walked in to the med bay and found her laying there with a vid up on the wall. She had used an old Omni-Tool to project the vid on the wall. 

“Hey,” she said to him softly, with a smile. “Come join me.”

He obliged as he came up to the side of bed and sat down. His weight shifted the bed down slightly, which stretched Heather’s wound. 

“Oh ouch,” Heather said, rubbing her hand over the injury. 

“Are you okay?” Garrus asked, turning towards her, concerned that he had hurt her. 

“I’m good, it’s still just really sore. Just lay down with me,” Heather said. 

Garrus climbed carefully into the bed and adjusted the pillows under his neck to protect his fringe. Heather curled up next to him and laid her head on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her gently to him as they watched the vid and drifted off to sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boring night shifts and a transition from nights to days equals tons of time to write!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight NSFW towards the end

Garrus woke up. He looked up at the ceiling and was a bit disoriented because this didn’t match the top of the bunk that he normally saw when he woke up. 

Panic set through him for a second until he heard a soft moan come from the bed next to him. That’s when he had remembered he had come up to Heather’s room after the mission on Edolus, and fell asleep watching a vid. 

It wasn’t like him to just fall asleep like he had, but the events on Edolus shook him a bit more than he had liked. He had never seen a thresher maw and to be put in such a vulnerable position, on that he could have not returned from, shook him to his core. He didn’t want to have something happen to either of them, not when they were figuring everything out.

He turned his head and saw Heather sleeping on her stomach next to him, her head turned away. She was uncovered, her shirt partially rode up exposing her back to him. He could see the injury was less pronounced, the wonder of medi-gel he thought to himself. 

The overwhelming need to touch her bare skin, the desire almost overwhelming him. He shifted to his side slightly and gazed down on her. His movement didn’t phase her at all. She looked so peaceful. Her long blonde hair partially obscured her face as she hugged the pillow to her. He stripped off his gloves, laying them on the side of the bed in front of Heather.

He reached over and gently rolled her and pulled her back towards him, her back resting against his chest. A soft moan came from Heather as Garrus laid his ungloved hand on her bare skin, rubbing across it gently. He marveled at how soft the skin was, and just how much warmth radiated from her skin. 

Heather turned her head back towards Garrus as she said in a sleepy voice, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he replied back, nuzzling down into the top of her head. 

Neither of them felt the need to pull from the other. Heather laid her hand over this and wrapped her fingers around his hand. 

They stayed there until Garrus’s Omni-tool dinged with a message. She groaned as he opened the message from Justin. 

“Shepard needs me to start on the Mako repairs. It’s not doing to well and he wants it ready for our next mission before we head to the Citadel,” Garrus explained.

He sat up on the side of the bed, which prompted Heather to roll onto her back. She winced slightly at the motion, moving a bit too fast still. 

Garrus looked down at her and said, “You can come down and help me with the repairs if you feel like it. Or just sit and keep me company.”

That elicited a smile from Heather. “I”ve got a few things to take care of before I make my rounds, but yeah, I’ll come help when I can,” she said. 

Garrus’s mandibles flared in a smile as he leaned down and pressed his plated lips to hers. She raised her hand and cradled the side of his face with it. He pressed his forehead to hers as he grabbed his gloves on the bed and set off to go get his tasks done. 

The doors slid open into the med-bay where he saw Dr. Chakwas sitting at her desk. He had forgotten that Heather’s room used to be a storage area. He gave her a small wave as he walked out the door to leave the elevator. 

Heather headed out of the med bay to go shower and grab some coffee to get her day started. 

“Heather!” Dr Chakwas called out. “Just the person I was looking for. How is the wound?”

“It’s good,” Heather said walking over to the doctor, “The tenderness is almost gone, and only really hurts when I stretch too much.”

“Good,” Dr. Chakwas replied. “You are healing much faster than I expected. If everything keeps up this way, I’ll remove your restrictions in a day or two.” 

Heather smiled as she excused herself from the doctor and headed to the showers. She quickly got ready and dressed herself in a tank top and jeans, since she wasn’t officially on duty today, and headed over to Justin’s cabin to check in on operations with him. 

The door slid open automatically and was greeted by Justin sitting on the couch waving her in. He gestured for her to sit down next to him and handed her another data pad with a mission brief.

“So,” Justin said, looking over at her, “Rumor has it that Vakarian didn’t return to the bunks in the cargo bay last night. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“He stayed over in my cabin with me after the Edolus mission. He fell asleep and stayed the night. Nothing happened,” Heather explained, turning only a slight shade of pink. “And don’t even start. Garrus told me Kaidan went running to you about what he saw. You can’t tease me about this!”

“I’m your big brother so we all knew that was going to happen anyway. I saw how you interacted with him on Therum. Besides you could do worse than a big spiky alien,” Justin said laughing.

Heather shoved him on the shoulder and started laughing with him as Joker came over the comms and announced. “Commander, priority hail from the Fifth Fleet.”

Justin furrowed his brows as he told him, “Send it to my private terminal.”

“Roger that,” Joker said, closing the comm link.

Justin walked over to the terminal on the wall and activated it. 

“Commander Shepard, this is Admiral Hackett. I have a mission for you. Reports are saying that the VI at our Luna base has gone rogue. We need you to get in and deactivate it,” the Admiral stated.

“What do you mean, rogue?” Justin asked him skeptically.

“We’ve lost the ability to control it. It’s no longer responding to our commands,” Hackett continued.

“That sounds an awful lot like an AI to me,” Heather piped up across the room.

Justin turned to shush Heather, but the Admiral continued on, “We know the rules against AI, and we have not crossed those lines.”

“We’re headed to the Citadel now, we will take care of it on our way there,” Justin said. 

“Thank you Commander. Hackett out,” Hackett concluded.

“Well,” Heather scoffed, “This sounds ominous.”

“Well, look at the bright side. We can bring Tali along and let her strengths really shine!” Justin exclaimed. 

“My brother, the eternal optimist. You make me sick,” Heather said jokingly. 

“Well, dear sister. You and Vakarian are going as well. Make sure you are healed up,” Justin said. “Should be there in about 2 days.”

“Well in that case, I’ll go tell the big spiky alien that he’s on tap for the mission,” Heather said standing up. “I also told him I’d help fix what you broke on the last mission.”

“Hey!” Justin protested. “You try getting tossed by a thresher maw and expect everything to be intact.”

“Just admit it, you suck at driving,” Heather said as she turned back towards him, walking backwards towards the door. She shot him a smile and exited his cabin. 

She walked back over towards the mess hall and grabbed the coffee that she had started previously and took the elevator down to the cargo bay. 

As the elevator doors opened, she saw everyone at their normal stations, going about their duties without any fuss. She was really starting to like this military style of life, something that was much better than the way she had been living before. 

She rounded the corner heading to engineering where Tali, Engineer Adams, and several other crew members were located. She had been spending a lot of time with both the Engineer and Tali to learn more about the drive core and how everything worked. 

She would just sit there and listen as they explained how the drive core worked, how they maintained it, everything they could possibly think of. Nothing snuck by her, as she would rattle off questions that would stump them or make them think. It proved to them that Heather truly enjoyed what they were telling her. 

Today, something was different when she entered. The room wasn’t buzzing with its normal chatter. Tali stayed off to the side, near the console she normally worked at, but something didn’t seem quite right. 

“Hey Tali!” Heather said, bounding up towards the Quarian, leaning against the console next to Tali. 

“Oh, hey Heather,” Tali replied, a solemn note in her voice. 

Heather furrowed her eyebrows in concern. “What’s wrong? You don’t sound like your normal chipper self.” 

“I just haven’t been sleeping too well. Back on the flotilla, a quiet engine meant something was wrong. I got used to hearing the different sounds the engine made,” she replied. 

“I get it. There was one ship I used to work on, this old Asari vessel, the Shining Symphony, that had sounded like metal grinding while it ran. And that was when it was working well. When I left that ship, I didn’t sleep right for a month. Every little sound woke me up,” Heather said, watching the Quarian in front of her perk up. 

“I’ve never been on an Asari ship before, tell me all about it,” Tali squealed as she clasped her hands to her chest. 

Heather chuckled as started to explain what the Shining Symphony had been like. 

Heather didn’t realize just how much time had passed as she and Tali continued to talk about much more than just ships. Heather learned a lot more about the Flotilla and Heather talked about her time working with the Shadowbroker. 

Before she knew it, the rest of the engineering crew had started to clear out, leading way for the skeleton crew that maintained the drive core overnight. They decided that it was probably time for them to head to bed as well and exited the room to be greeted by an empty cargo bay.

That is, an almost empty cargo bay. The Alliance crew had all cleared out. They didn’t have anyone who posted in the cargo bay over the night cycle. However, she could see a faint glow coming from the console over by the Mako. She couldn’t tell right away but was fairly sure that Garrus was still working on something over there. 

She and Tali walked back over towards the rear of the cargo bay, Tali heading to the makeshift bunks in the back, and Heather towards the Mako. Tali waved good night to Heather as Heather stopped in front of the Mako. She could see a faint illuminating glow coming from under the Mako, and 2 distinctly Turian legs sticking out from under it. 

She could hear a faint mechanical whirl as well as some music emitting from the area, so she figured Garrus was working hard on something. She leaned against the Mako for a moment. It became clear to her that Garrus didn’t hear her approach him, which was very unlike him. He must have been really involved in what he was doing. 

She kneeled down and looked over at him, his Omni-tool glowing from whatever he was doing. “Working hard, or hardly working?” She asked somewhat loudly, to get his attention to her. 

“What?” Garrus said, shooting straight up, driving his head right into the underside of the Mako. He laid back on the ground and muttered some curses that Heather wasn’t quite able to make out. 

She shot down under the Mako with him, laying down beside him, propped up on her elbow. “Oh my god, are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” she said, her free hand checking for any lacerations on his forehead.

Garrus opened his eyes to see her there with him, looking down at him with concern and worry all over her face. He chuckled a little bit trying to laugh off what just happened. “Well, at least we know this part won’t dent if a handsome Turian hits it with their head.”

“Ass,” Heather said, smacking him on the arm. “I didn’t want to be the reason why you hurt yourself.”

“It smarts a bit but I think I’ll make it,” Garrus said, giving her a wink. 

“What are you still doing up?” Heather asked him. 

“Well, Turian’s don’t need the same amount of sleep that you humans do, and besides, it’s alot easier to get things done when everyone else is asleep,” he said, turning to look towards Heather, “and even less difficult when there isn’t a beautiful human in front of me to distract me even more?”

Heather rested her hand underneath her head, supporting it. “So I’m a distraction?” She asked him, with a smile on her face.

“Always,” Garrus replied, leaning towards her and pressing his lips to hers. 

They continued to chat for a bit as Garrus finished up the remainder of his repairs on the Mako. After he was finished, he reluctantly let Heather walk back to her cabin alone, as he made his way to the quarters at the rear of the cargo bay. 

Heather wasn’t a fan of waking up alone. She already missed the warm Turian next to her, with his arms wrapped around her. She sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched, the pain in her side completely gone. She gently raised the hem of her shirt up and saw that the laceration was nearly gone, just a faint line running across her skin. She quickly stood up and headed out to the med bay to get her clearance.

“Well Heather, you are clear, all restrictions lifted. But don’t go too rough, I don’t want to see you back in the med bay because you overworked yourself,” Dr Chakwas told her. 

“I’ll be fine,” Heather said, opening her Omni-Tool up. 

_ HShep: Wrex - cargo bay 5 min - it’s time to spar _

Garrus was making his way back to the cargo bay to finish up some of the work he had left for himself from the prior night. He grabbed himself a cup of kava and went over the reports with the Commander to gain final approval on some new upgrades to the system there. 

He figured Heather was still in bed. He knew that she tended to sleep as much as she could, and with the duty restrictions, there was no way she would be up yet. He opened his Omni-Tool to send her a message to meet up for lunch as the elevator doors to the cargo bay opened. 

“Raaaaaahhhh!” He heard Wrex yell as he saw him charge towards something. He saw a small blur move off to the side, quicker than what he had expected. The blur came into focus, as he saw Heather move up behind him, staying low to the ground in an effort to topple the top heavy Krogan over. 

Wrex quickly countered, attempting to grab Heather’s leg that she was trying to use to knock him over. He pulled, sending Heather down onto her back. She quickly sprung back to her feet, taking advantage of the fact Wrex had let go of her leg.

She used her speed to twist back behind him, vaulting herself up onto his back.

“I should have known a pyjack like you wouldn’t fight fair,” Wrex said, unable to shake her from his back. 

Heather laughed, as she hopped down, stepped in front of Wrex, her fist flying out and connecting with Wrex’s jaw. “That’s for taking it easy on me! I may be human but I’m not made of glass!”

Wrex snarled as he raised his fist up, ready to knock her against the wall. However, his fist was stopped by something, he turned his head to see Garrus holding his fist and not letting him move. “Let. Go,” Wrex said menacingly. 

“Games over, Wrex,” Garrus said, releasing his fist. “If you want to kill something, it shouldn’t be the commander’s little sister.”

“Hrumph,” Wrex muttered as he wandered away.

“I had him!” Heather said.

“You have a death wish?” Garrus asked her, taking her hands into his, examining the cuts on her knuckles, blood seeping from a couple of them. 

“Well, sparring isn’t normal with humans, and Liara and Tali aren’t really the sparring type, so that left Wrex.” Heather tried to explain.

“And what about me?” Garrus asked, crossing his arms. 

Heather started to stutter a bit. “I didn’t think you’d want to,” She said. She couldn’t come up with a reason as to why she hadn’t asked him. She knew that it was common for Turians to spar.

Garrus took an application of Medi-gel and rubbed it over her knuckles, the marring on them becoming a lot less apparent. “You could have just asked,” he said. \

Heather looked up at him. “Well would you like to spar with me?”

Garrus nodded his head. “Let me finish up some work on the Mako. I’ll come get you when I’m ready,” he replied. “In the meantime, go relax a bit. The cargo bay isn’t going to burn down if you take some time to yourself.”

Heather obliged and headed back to her cabin. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but her knuckles hurt worse than she had expected. She sparred with him because she was a woman of her word, but she figured she could easily get hurt, something she didn’t want to have to explain to Justin. 

She looked in the mirror she had put up in her cabin and saw the clothes she had been wearing were splattered in red and orange, both her and Wrex’s blood. She threw them off and grabbed a tank top and a pair of shorts and threw them on. 

She curled up on her bed and went over the mission briefs that Justin had sent to her earlier in the day. They were getting close to the Sol system. A bit of worry panged in her stomach, because she hadn’t been back to the system since she left on the MSV Estevanico all those years ago. She had never really wanted to return to Earth and all the things that they had gone through there. 

She got a bit frustrated at the Alliance, because she felt that they were doing their dirty work, when there was such a large threat to the galaxy out there. She tossed the data pad off to the side as her omni tool dinged again.

_ GVkrn: I’m all finished with everything. Meet you down here? _

_ HShep: How about my room? There’s plenty of space in here? _

_ GVkrn: Good idea. No audience that way.  _

_ HShep: I heard that Turians place bets on the outcome of sparring.  _

_ GVkrn: True, but I don’t think most humans spar the way we do.  _

_ HShep: Touche. See you in a few.  _

Garrus was a bit confused by Heather’s last message. His translator didn’t have anything for the human word she started the message off with. As he entered the med bay he was relieved to not see Dr. Chakwas sitting there. It was slightly awkward to have to pass through there each time to see Heather when she was still there. He slid the door open to find Heather still sitting on her bed, rubbing her knuckles gently. 

Heather looked over as the doors opened and saw Garrus standing there in the Turian equivalent of work out gear. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up and walked towards Garrus. 

His mandible nearly dropped. He had never seen her like this before. Her legs were nearly pure muscle, he could see them moving under her skin as she walked towards him. Her skin pale in contrast to the black of her shorts and the color from the tattoo that covered her right thigh. At that point, sparring was the farthest thing on his mind. He just wanted to run his talons over her skin.

“This should be fun!” Heather exclaimed.

Garrus shook his head as Heather dropped into a ready stance. She started to circle around him, which caused Garrus’s instincts to take over. 

He started to move, circling around her like a predator. He was watching, looking for her patterns to see where he could make his move. 

Heather waited until he was just in her peripheral, as she swung herself towards him, using her quick momentum to swing back behind him.

Garrus spun on his heels quickly, reaching out and grabbing her arm as he turned. He slid his hand down to her wrist, and used it to twist her arm behind her back, forcing her back to him. 

Heather let out a small yelp, which caused Garrus to lessen his hold on her. She used that to her advantage and broke free from his grip. She turned and grabbed his arm, pulling it back behind him, making him unsteady on his feet. 

Garrus was a bit shocked. He knew she was tough, but didn’t expect some dirty tactics like that. He steadied his feet, using his height to extend his leg out, wrapping his foot around her ankle and pulled it out of under her. 

She tried to pull him down with her, but the sturdy base he had built for himself prevented her from being able to do that. 

He crossed his arms as he looked down at Heather, a smirk growing over his face as she sat there on the floor. 

“Oh, this isn’t over,” she said, springing back up to her feet. She was quicker than he had expected, and she quickly moved up towards him, trying to catch him off guard by throwing a few punches to his face. 

Garrus stumbled backwards slightly, taken a bit back by that. He shook his head as he swung his arm forward, his reach allowing him to connect with her. He could see some redness on her face starting to show from where the punch had connected. 

He hesitated as Heather moved back towards him, his reflexes slower, managing only to grab onto the shirt she was wearing. She pulled away from him, his hand taking a chunk of the shirt. 

She stood there, shocked as Garrus held a piece of her purple tank top in her hand. “Not fair Garrus. You didn’t have to rip my clothes. If you wanted me to take my shirt off, you just had to ask.”

She reached down to the remaining hemline of her shirt and pulled it up over her head, leaving herself in just a sports bra. 

Garrus couldn’t move. He just stood there in shock at what was happening in front of him. He could feel his plates start to shift as Heather moved back towards him. 

Garrus growled as he lunged back towards Heather, one arm wrapping around her waist as he pulled her close to him. 

She looked up to his eyes, she could see the want and lust in his eyes. She shifted, using her leg, she hooked her foot around his leg, causing both of them to tumble to the floor. 

He used the arm that had been around her waist to pull her underneath him. He moved his free hand, grabbing her wrist and placing it above her head as he released her waist to grab the other wrist. 

Both of their breaths were heavy as their eyes connected. “Is this how all Turian sparring matches end?” Heather asked him, her voice husky. 

“Only when our sparring partner is irresistible,” Garrus replied. He leaned down and placed his lips to hers in a hungry kiss. She moaned into his mouth, as his hands released hers, his sliding up her exposed stomach. She nipped at his lip plates slightly.

He moved his head, and used his tongue to trace a line down her neck. “Oh Garrus,” she moaned. He could feel pressure building behind his plates

“Ground team, be at the shuttle for Sol in 5 minutes,” Justin’s voice boomed over the intercom. 

Heather closed her eyes and groaned. She shifted so she could sit back up. “Well we better not keep his majesty waiting,” she said. 

Heather stood up and walked over to her small locker and pulled out her undersuit. She slipped it on quickly and walked back over to Garrus who was back on his feet by the door. “Besides, we can totally finish what we started later.” 

She stepped up to her tip toes and pressed another kiss against him, finding it difficult to pull away from him. 

“Let’s go pull the Alliance’s ass out of the fire.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW Ahead!

Heather was already down by the Mako with Tali when Garrus came up. He had quickly ran to the shower to cool his plates down before they headed off on the mission. 

Heather shot him a wink as Garrus came up and stood just off to the side of her, his hand ghosting a bit around her waist. Tali paid them no mind as she chattered away, clearly excited she was going on the mission. 

Justin exited the elevator and started walking up towards the group, his eyes trained on the datapad in his hands. His attentioned never waivered from it until he stopped about 10 feet away from the ground team. 

Heather could tell by the way her brother was acting that something wasn’t quite right with the mission. She watched as he spun on his heels and turned towards Ashley who was still over at the weapons bench, working on upgrading the weapons with the new tech that Heather had acquired. She couldn’t make out what Justin was saying, but she was able to infer what was said as Ashely headed to her locker to begin putting on her armor as Justin headed back towards the Mako. 

Justin approached the group and very bluntly stated, “Ash is joining us for this mission.” 

Heather looked to Justin and raised an eyebrow at him. She found it odd that he didn’t ask Kaidan to come along with them, but then remembered that Justin seemed to be avoiding Kaidan right now, for reasons she didn’t know, but welcomed her friend to the ground crew. 

Justin immediately tried to cover his bases when he realized that Heather was looking at him skeptically. “We’ve got 3 bunkers to cover and a lot of unknowns down there, so I’m splitting us up. My sister and Vakarian will break off and head to the main circuit breaker while Williams, Tali and myself will clear the fail safe and then take down the VI at the main interface. Hackett mentioned that there is a lot of firepower stored here, and while he wouldn’t say what, it’s assumed to be hostile. Williams is there for additional fire support while Tali is disabling the VI.”

The group piled into the Mako to prepare for the drop. Unbeknownst to the group, Kaidan had been watching from the sidelines. Pangs of jealousy ran through him as he longed to be part of the ground team. 

Kaidan felt that Justin had been avoiding him since the incident that resulted in Kaidan awkwardly fled Justin’s quarters. He did not intend for it to happen, but part of him panicked and he did the only thing that he could think of -- run away. 

Ever since then, regret has poured through him. He didn’t want Justin to hate him, but he would understand if he did. After it happened, it had taken him a couple of days to understand what happened, and that’s when he began to realize what he had been feeling for Heather was nothing more than lust and realized that something stronger and deeper that was was building towards Justin, and it scared him. 

It fully became clear to Kaidan when he saw Heather and Garrus standing next to each other by the Mako, his arm wrapped around her waist, the relaxed stance she had around him. He could also see a new sidearm adorning her hip, with ‘Vakarian’ engraved in bright blue made it obvious where it had come from. 

Instead of feeling jealous or angry as he previously had when he saw them together, instead he felt...happy for them. That’s when he realized, he was falling for Justin. 

He knew that there were regulations against fraternization with a fellow soldier, let alone a superior officer, but to hell with that. He wasn’t going to let Justin slip away from him. He knew that when they got back from the mission, he would tell Justin how he felt. 

The Mako was packed a bit fuller than Heather liked but she understood what Justin’s reasoning in this was. Heather got forced out of her normal role on the gun in favor of Ashley while she had gotten to know Ashley better, she knew that Ashlye wasn’t a huge fan of aliens in general, so she had no issue sitting closer to garrus while he manned the cannon. 

Heather quickly keyed out a message to Garrus. 

_ HShep: I’m surprised my brother is sending us off by ourselves. I was about 98% sure that Ashley was coming to be our chaperone.  _

_ GVkrn: Hmm. Wouldn’t put it past him, but the sooner we get through this, the sooner we can pick up where we left off. _

Heather smirked and shot Garrus a wink as his mandibles flared in a smile as she sent back:

_ HShep: Deal. _

Justin had anticipated fairly heavy resistance as they approached the Alliance base, especially because this appeared to be a research facility. He chuckled to himself as he maneuvered the Mako around the large turrets that were set up on each outpost. He heard armor clud together as he heard Heather curse after being tossed into Garrus. Despite his erratic driving, Ashley and Garrus made quick work of the turrets which meant they were able to head inside. 

Justin brought the Mako to a stop in front of the central outpost and allowed everyone to exit. Justin climbed out and patched everyone into his comm channel to discuss the plan for the mission. “The main circuit breaker is behind us in this one,” Justin said, gesturing to the outpost behind him. “The VI interface is in the far one on the left, and the fail safe is in the one on the right. The plan is for me, Williams, and Tali to hit the fail safe and then move to the VI interface to disable it. Vakarian and my sister will stay at the main breaker and kill it on our call.”

They nodded and took off in their respective directions. Heather and Garrus waited for the elevator to pull up as they made their way into the central outpost. As soon as the elevator had oxygen flowing, they removed their helmets and collapsed them down to store in their armor. 

Heather shook out her hair and tied it quickly off to the side in its normal long side ponytail. She turned back towards Garrus who’s eyes were glued to her, with almost a predatory glow to them. 

She turned back from him and quickly pulled up her omni-tool to begin scans as they descended down. She twisted her neck, exposing it more as she worked.

Suddenly, she felt her self be jolted, two arms wrapping around her waist and pulling her, sending her flying in to the Turian by her side. 

“What the…” Heather said, her voice trailing off into a moan as Garrus ran his tongue along her exposed neck, lightly nipping at the spot right below her ear.

“If you keep this up, we won’t make it back to the ship,” Garrus said into the side of her neck, his voice low and nearly panting. 

She pulled away from him, stepped up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his, lingering to deepening the kiss. As she pulled away she said, “I like to make things difficult.”

Her Omni-tool dinged as the scans had been completed. She turned around and leaned back against Garrus as he wrapped an arm around her waist and looked over her shoulder. 

“Hmm,” Garrus said, “Opposition seems to get heavier as we get closer to the circuit. Makes sense.”

“I really need to splurge for the upgrade on this thing. The new version would tell me what kind of enemies they are,” Heather complained. 

“And that is fully illegal in Citadel space,” Garrus said, nuzzling back into her neck. She reached back and smacked his arm. “You’d better get one for me too,” he said, still not lifting his head from her neck. 

The elevator door dinged open and Heather pulled herself from Garrus’s grasp and partially skipped ahead. 

She unholstered her pistol, loaded a fresh heat sink in, and smiled back at Garrus. “Try and keep up,” she said saucily as she pushed forward and opened fire on the drones encroaching on their position. 

Garrus rolled his eyes as he grabbed his rifle off of his back and chased after her, following the echoes of gunfire in the building.

He entered the large room to see a large amount of drones pushing on Heather’s position. He quickly lined up his shots and had all of them land dysfunctional at her feet before she could load the next heat sink in her pistol.

She popped her head up to see if there were any more left and frowned when she realized that Garrus had taken the rest of them out. She holstered her pistol as Garrus came sauntering up to her. He swung his rifle back on to his back as he stepped up closer to her, to whisper in her ear, “I won,”

Heather shook her head as they walked back towards the final room where the main circuit panels were hiding. 

They surveyed the room and found that there was nothing there. All that was left was to wait for the word from Justin and his team. 

It took everything Heather had not to rip all of Garrus’s armor off. She sauntered back up to him, and leaned in towards him, when their comms went off. 

“Vakarian, Heather,” Justin’s voice rang out. “We’ve reached the fail safe. Be on your toes.”

Heather pulled herself back from Garrus and had her and hovering over her pistol, Garrus unclipping his rifle. 

“Tali’Zorah to Team 2, Fail safe has been disabled, heading towards the main interface.” Tali said, as Heather stepped back up towards Garrus. 

She opened her comm and called out, “Team 1, this is Shepard 2. All resistance has been terminated here, awaiting your commands.”

Garrus rolled his eyes at her and chuckled slightly, as both of their Omni-Tools dinged with a message. 

_ JShep: No fucking around while waiting. Don’t make me regret sending you guys on your own. _

Heather rolled her eyes. “Aaaand there it is. It's like he can’t trust us to be alone together.”

Garrus stepped up towards her. “He’s not wrong,” Garrus said, leaning down and planting a kiss on her lips. “I’ve wanted to tear you out of that armor since we got on that elevator together.”

Heather wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his armor as his arms came to wrap around her as well. 

It took every ounce of both of their strengths to not let anything move any further, especially because of how long it was taking Team 1 to finish their part of the mission. Eventually, they sat down on the floor, Garrus with his back against the wall with Heather settling in between his legs, her back to his chest, fingers inter linked while they waited. 

“Shepard to Team 2, We’ve reached the VI interface. Tali has to run a few commands first, so it may take a minute to get everything ready for you guys,” Justin’s voice said over their comms. 

Given that they were going to have to wait, there was no rush for either of them to jump to their feet as they listened to Tali work through what she was doing. 

“Now, if I pull this wire, this part of the interface should power down,” Tali said in her heavily accidented voice. “Aaaaand, there! Uh oh...”

“What do you mean, uh oh?” Heather questioned as she turned her head back to look at Garrus, who shrugged his shoulders.

“Just be on the lookout, that wire may have released a rocket drone,” she continued on. 

“I thought we took all of those out,” Garrus said to Heather, who was about ready to jump to her feet. 

They could hear a faint mechanical whirring coming from behind them, neither of them turning around, but realizing that the rocket drone was right behind them. “Shit,” Heather said. 

The Rocket Drone launched a rocket right at them, Garrus’s quick reaction just barely pulling them out of the way, the rocket flying right by the side of Heather’s head. Garrus reached and grabbed Heather’s pistol disabling the drone in one fell swoop.

They crashed together on the floor, both of their breathing heavy. Heather’s face wrinkled up when she smelled something odd. “What’s that smell?” she asked Garrus, who didn’t seem to notice anything different. “It smells like…..” Heather’s eyes went wide. “Hair!” She reached over and saw that a good amount of her ponytail had been singed off by the rocket as it went past them. She ran her hands over the long part of her ponytail and found burnt pieces of hair falling into her hands. 

Garrus sat there in shock as Heather’s hair fell to the ground, leaving a much shorter stub in her ponytail. Heather opened up the comm line as she said “Tali’s paying for my next trip to the hairdresser because of that rocket drone.”

Justin started to laugh which resulted in a glare from Tali. He shrugged his shoulders at her. 

“This should do it, be ready to take out the breaker!” Tali cried out. Heather and Garrus scrambled to their feet and got ready to disable the breaker.

“Now!” Tali cried as she pulled the final wire. Heather and Garrus fired simultaneously on the breaker which caused it to spark and eventually power down.

“It’s down,” Garrus said over the comm line.

“Everyone meet back at the Mako, let’s get off this rock,” Justin said. 

Justin took a couple of steps forwards, as an explosion went off, sending him to the ground, rendering him unconscious. 

Heather and Garrus were waiting at the Mako when they saw Tali and Ashley pulling a fully out Justin in their arms. Heather and Garrus broke into a sprint to go assist them with her brother. 

“What happened?” Heather panted as they reached them. 

“Delayed explosion,” Ashley explained. “Something fried inside the VI there and it knocked him to the ground. I think he hit his head on something.”

“Normandy! This is Heather Shepard. We need immediate extraction. Have the med bay prepped. The Commander has sustained a head injury,” she yelled over the comms.

“Aye aye, Lieutenant, coming in for extraction now,” Joker said. He turned to Kaidan who was sitting in the copilot chair with all of the color drained out of his face. “Those Shepards certainly are prone to injury.”

“I’ve got to go,” Kaidan said, his voice shaking, “I need to make sure that Shepard is okay.” Kaidan turned and ran out of the room and headed straight down to the med bay. 

Kaidan was waiting as he watched Heather and Garrus pull Justin into the Med Bay. His head slumped down with a faint trickle of blood running down his forehead. 

Dr. Chawkwas jumped in immediately as Heather and Garrus hoisted him up onto the bed and began scanning him. “Good news, he’s just knocked out, there’s no permanent damage, he’ll just be out for a while longer.”

Heather breathed a sigh of relief. She looked over to Kaidan who still had a look of pure fear on his face. That’s when she realized that Kaidan was falling for her brother. She nudged Garrus, and gestured for them to leave. “Let me know when he’s awake, Doctor,” as she grabbed Garrus’s hand and led him out. 

Heather watched from the Mess Hall as she saw Kaidan pull up a chair and place it next to Justin’s bed to wait for him to wake up. She was brought back to reality when she could feel a hot breath on the back of her neck. 

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to finish everything later,” Garrus said, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around her waist and pull her to him. 

Heather turned towards him and stepped up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “I have the codes to the showers. Privacy and unlimited water.”

His mandibles grew into a smile as he grabbed her hand and practically began to drag her to the showers. 

“Easy,” Heather said just as anxious as he was. “Let’s not make it that obvious.”

It wasn’t uncommon for people to share showers on the Normandy, which they were thankful were separate from the rest of the restroom facilities today. It was a time that the odds of them getting interrupted were slim to none. 

They hadn’t even had a chance to dump off their armor before they entered the showers. 

Heather turned around and used the code she had to secure the doors to the showers, as far as she knew no one had an override code. As she turned back around she could hear parts of Garrus’s armor already clanking to the floor. 

“Eager much?” she asked him, as she stepped closer to him, wrapping her arms up around his neck. 

“What can I say?” Garrus said, leaning down to press his lips to hers. He licked the seam of her lips, requesting to deepen the kiss. Heather obliged and their tongues wrapped around each other. He broke the kiss and looked down at her. “It’s hard to wait when I know I get to have you.”

Heather slid her hand up and worked the soft leathery skin underneath his fringe as he found the clasps on her armor, removing pieces and tossing them aside. 

Heather ran her hands down the sides of his neck down to his carapace and began searching for the clasps on his armor. Garrus pushed her hands away. “Let me get you first.”

She could only nod as she brought her lips back towards his. He met her eagerly as his found the final clasps of her chest piece, which fell to the fall in a clang, leaving her only in her skin tight undersuit. 

He leaned back from her for a moment and released the clasps on his armor, his carapace exposed, showing no undersuit under his armor. 

Heather cocked her head, and asked “Do Turians not do undersuits?” as she ran her hands down his exposed torso, her fingers sliding inbetween his plates.

Garrus responded by undoing the final clasp of her armor, leaving her solely in her undersuit. “Only when we are in a rush to get out of it,” he practically growled pushing her against the wall. 

He found the zipper and started to slowly push it down to expose her skin, his tongue following the skin that became exposed. He could feel the pressure behind his slit, starting to work its way open.

He slid the zipper down and exposing her breasts, held by a different piece of material than he had seen before, something much smaller made fully of lace. 

Garrus’s mandibles dropped as he slid his hands over her skin, her back arching into his touch as his hands covered her breasts. He stood back up and grabbed her mouth in a hungry kiss as he continued his hands down her. He slipped his hand down into the suit that remained, slipping his fingers over her sensitive spot which resulted in a loud moan in his mouth. Wetness pooled between her legs as he continued to gently touch and explore. 

“Garrus,” Heather said, fully out of breath, “Oh my god.” She moved her hips to straddle his hand even more as he gently slid one finger in. 

Garrus lost all control and slipped out of his slit, the fact he was still in his armor causing him pain and causing him to pull away from her for a second. 

Heather saw the pain in his eyes and looked down and quickly undid the latches on his leg armor, the remaining pieces falling. She ran her hands over his waist, the soft hide, as she lowered her hands. She reached and grabbed Garrus’s fully erect cock and stroked it slowly in her hand, his eyes closing in pleasure as his nails dug in to the wall behind her. She looked down and saw the dark blue member staring back at her, slightly bigger than anything she had ever been with before. 

She pulled her hand away, resulting in a groan from Garrus as she dropped the remainder of her undersuit to the ground, leaving her fully bare before him. 

He opened his eyes to see her, her singed blonde hair pushed behind her, her white milky skin riddled with colorful ink, a smile on her face, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. She stepped up towards him, and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her bare skin against his rough hide, as she licked a line up his neck and whispered. “I need you inside me,” 

Garrus growled and lifted Heather up, laying her down on the cold floor as he laid down over top of her. He leaned down and claimed her lips as he ran his hand over the apex of her legs, slowly working his way down lower. 

He broke the kiss and reached down to stroke his cock as he looked at Heather. He leaned back down and ran the tip of his cock over her lower lips, pressing slowly into her entrance. 

Heather moaned and arched her back as Garrus entered her, slowly moving in until he was fully hilted in. He leaned up slightly and placed his hands on her hips as he began to grind his hips against hers.

Heather continued to moan as his thick member rubbed deliciously inside of her as he worked in and out. Garrus’s eyes snapped shut. He couldn’t believe just how tight this was, how wonderful it felt. 

He picked up speed as he laid down and licked a line on her neck. Heather wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face to muffle her cries of pleasure. 

Her back arched again as she came, wrapping tighter around his cock, which sent him over the edge almost immediately. He struggled not to cry out as he grabbed her and rolled to his back. 

She collapsed on him, her breathing heavy as he wrapped his arms around her. 

“That...was...amazing.” Heather said, breathing between each word. 

Garrus couldn’t even answer, he sat there and gasped as he came down from his high. That was the best he had had in ages.

Heather pulled herself up and started the water in the shower. “Well, might as well actually get clean now,” she giggled as Garrus got up and pulled her into his arms. 

Justin opened his eyes and saw the bright lights of the med bay. He quickly looked around, the sudden movement causing pain in his head. 

“Don’t move Commander,” a male voice told him, “you hit your head pretty good.”

“Kaidan?” Justin asked him, his vision still blurry but entrained on where he heard the voice come from. 

“I…had to make sure you were okay. I didn’t want something to happen to you when the last thing I said or did was run away from you,” Kaidan said, gently placing his hand over Justin’s on the bed. 

Justin’s vision slowly came back as he saw the worried look on Kaidan’s face become clearer. He gently squeezed Kaidan’s hand and said, “It’s okay, I screwed up. I wasn’t going to blame you if you wanted to leave the ship.”

“I don’t want to leave the ship,” Kaidan said, “I....I messed up when I ran from you. I didn’t know what to feel, but I regret what I did. To feel like you hated me was one of the worst feelings I had ever experienced.”

“I could never hate you Kaidan,” Justin said soflty, reaching up to stroke the side of Kaidan’s face. 

Kaidan didn’t pull away, he reached his hand up and held Justin’s hand to his face. Kaidan looked up at Justin and said, “I don’t want to run away anymore.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over 1100 views!!!! This is unbelievable to me. Thank you for all of your support and bearing with my extremely irregular posting. 
> 
> This was my first time writing (and posting) any Garrus smut, so you guys have enjoyed it!


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